Coca-Cola to increase digital acitivity
23 Jul 2009
US soft drinks giant Coca-Cola plans to increase its activity on digital media. The company wants to tap into changing consumer behaviour around the world, says Coca-Cola president and CEO, Muhtar Kent.
During the last quarter, Coca-Cola's profits rose to $2.0 billion from $1.4 billion in the same period a year earlier, largely due to double-digit sales growth in countries like India and China.
One area where the beverage manufacturer has already achieved considerable success has ben on social networking website Facebook, where a page set up by two "fans" of its eponymous cola brand has attracted over 3 million "friends".
Coca-Cola has found out that globally, 19 million consumers, of which over 40 per cent are under the age of 25, are registered in their databases.
This includes 12 million people signed up to My Coke Rewards in the US, where they can use codes printed on Coca-Cola products to claim rewards from magazine subscriptions to goods made by Nike
Other innovative strategies adopted by the Atlanta-based corporation include the release of a song entitled Open Happiness, which ties in with its most recent marketing positioning, but also carries a minimal amount of branding.
More than 600,000 people have downloaded the song from MySpace, and it has also taken the number one position on the music download chart operated by Baidu, one of China's biggest web portals.