#anygiventuesday

In a presentation titled #AnyGivenTuesday, Wendy Clarke, the president of sparkling and strategic marketing for Coca-Cola North America, explained today’s consumer is either online or asleep. They are online until they go to sleep and as soon as they wake up back online. As a result Coke now run their marketing in real time.

Engaging always-on consumers in real time requires brands to completely rethink how they create, curate and share content. To achieve this, a network of 23 customer interaction centers around the world analyse social conversations about Coca-Cola brands providing a content team with valuable insights. This content development team operates like a newsroom to source, create and distribute shareable, real-time content around the world.

Clark shared a handful of lessons Coke has learned on its real-time marketing journey:

1. Silence is not an option
“In a socially networked world, you must engage in conversation around your brands or company,” Clark said, noting that consumers — especially Millennials — value brands that communicate openly and transparently. “If you’re silent, your truth will be filled in for you.”

2. Speed trumps perfection
Clark stressed the need to produce authentic, contextually relevant “work that matters” and cautioned the audience of marketers to value quality over quantity. “The world doesn’t need more content,” she said. “The world needs more good content.”

3. Co-creation is key
Noting that up to 85 percent of all social content about Coca-Cola is generated by fans, Clark said the brand is at its best when it collaborates with consumers to produce a “one plus one equals three” outcome. She cited the conversation-provoking “Share a Coke” campaign, which has rolled out in 50 countries worldwide and recently launched in the U.S

4. Culture matters
“You can’t operate effectively in our social reality with a hierarchical organization,” Clark said. Through new models and approaches to content creation such as The Hub and The Hustle, Coke is empowering marketers at all levels to drive real-time decision making. “And you’ve got to experiment and innovate out in the open,” she added. “For a 128-year-old company like Coke, that’s a great thing.”

5. Learn more, guess less
Real-time marketing yields metrics immediately, enabling marketers to be “more precise and more predictive.” “When we’ve done something wrong, we know because our fans, friends and ‘hand-raisers’ let us know,” Clark explained

Coca Cola are brilliant marketers. When you break this product down it is brown sugar, caffeine and carbonated water in a tin can. It the branding and advertising that make this product happy. Although, I am not sure it’s making your body happy.