How Coca-Cola Mastered Brand Journalism

Sharing is Caring

With 130 years of global business domination and revenue in the billions of dollars, Coca-Cola appears to have its customer engagement process fine-tuned for success. However, that triumph did not happen overnight, nor is it a done deal by any means.
Doug Busk brings to Coca-Cola his extraordinary social media expertise that was honed on the presidential campaign trail. He is in the enviable position of being able to lay claim to the revolutionary success of President Obama’s 2006 voter engagement through social and mobile.
He knows that the way to maintain and grow a global fan base of this magnitude is through consistency and collaboration. That is, consistent learning, invention, reinvention, and evolution of your engagement plan and collaborating across the organization to cultivate content.
Through this approach, Doug has pushed the already-successful Coca-Cola brand platform from serving 4 countries to 26 sites that serve over 35 countries. His internal evangelizing on behalf of his platform has transformed countless employees into advocates that support his brand journalism both inside and outside the office.

In This Episode

• Why brand journalism means telling stories about more than just the brand
• How changing network content consumption has led to fewer clicks
• Why a successful marketing plan means leveraging anything and everything
• How the right storytelling leads to a more humanized and approachable brand
• Why successful and engaging pieces means hitting the 3 C’s: content, currency, and coordination
• The power of internal cross-corporate collaboration and support

Quotes From This Episode

“We believe that culture is context.” —@dbusk
“Sharing is caring when it comes to social.” —@dbusk
“We really do try to do A2B2C storytelling that goes way beyond what you might expect.” —@dbusk
“People are no longer leveraging their networks to simply learn about a new link to click on, but instead are engaging, reading, and sharing that content within the network, as an end point in and of itself.” —@dbusk
“We look at any network that is going to help us to drive Journey content at the right time and in the right way for any consumer or critic out there.” —@dbusk

“We are all a part of this vanguard of publishers that are recognizing there’s not one way to connect with our readers and will happily leverage whatever engagement, sharing, faving, or liking techniques that the networks make available to us.” —@dbusk

“Storytelling is an incredible way to pull back the curtains on what we do, why we do it, and how we do it.” —@dbusk
“We learn from our readers. We learn from our critics. We learn from our questioners. We learn from our fans every single day.” —@dbusk
“You have to put a very strong emphasis on cultivating a culture of partnership throughout the company.” —@dbusk

Resources

• Doug Busk on Twitter: @dbusk
• The Coca-Cola Journey on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram
• Revolution Messaging
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