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Why Isn’t Coke on Twitter?

posted on February 11, 2009


Econsultancy recently ranted about the one-dimensional marketing world many top brands like Coke operate in. Coke may have the worlds biggest Facebook Fan Page but they’re not on Twitter!! And they aren’t integrating their online and offline ad campaigns either.

“All too often the internet (and mobile) is a last-minute thought, when it should be built into a campaign at the outset. More than that, it should now be hardwired into marketing strategies by default.”

-Why do Top Global Brands Like Coca Cola Ignor Twitter?

Not only has someone else claimed Coke’s brand names on Twitter Coke doesn’t appear to listen. Even though it’s being talked about.  The word ‘Coke’ appears more than 1,000 times on Twitter in just a day (their other brands are mentioned too).

Here are ideas on how to engage people using Twitter that you can steal for your cutting edge marketing plan:

  • Track your brand and use the information people are saying as testimonials, product feedback, and to get ideas for commercials or campaigns.
  • Add a real time feed of Twitter searches with your brand name to your blog so each time your brand is mentioned on Twitter, it’s there.
  • Aggregate  tweets from everyone who speaks for your company on Twitter into one place (I assume through a widget/RSS feed on your blog).
  • Dynamically display tweets about a specific post along with blog comments.  If you’re on WordPress the plug-in  ‘Tweetbacks’ will do this.

Is this too much? Do you care? Should you?

While I think Coke should be on the Twitter bandwagon, their particular weaknesses in integrating social media with their regular advertising isn’t shocking. It’s the norm. Judging from a new report about Social Media and Online PR from MarketingSherpa that I’ve been digging into, this isn’t uncommon.

According to MarketingSherpa’s research, almost half of SMBs and large businesses use social media with online maketing. If you ask if they integrate online and offline marketing with social media, most businesses — especially bigger ones say they don’t. Part of the problem is most claim social media doesn’t fit well with marketing through direct mail, print ads, or tv ads. So it’s no surprise that they’re not integrating the two.


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  • Cheapsuits

    What would you tell the Muckity Mucks in Atlanta about the ROI of being on twitter in 140 characters or less?

  • http://www.doktertomi.com doktertomi

    twitter will grow up, i think. lets see, what they can do to attract coke in the future

    doktertomi’s last blog post..Bullet For My Valentine: Scream Aim Fire Album

  • http://cssdigitaldesign.co.uk sheppy

    I do agree but I’ve also had significant experience working in huge companies. There isn’t just one marketing department for coke, I fully expect there to be a more complex structure. Also when you are delicately representing a brand as important as coke, there are sometimes quite strict guidelines in place so you can’t get rogue people doing what they like without considering the consequences. Pretty much most of the SEO/marketing blogosphere is made up of people working for either small companies, or for themselves, and can quite easily judge from an armchair, which is so easy to do.

    Generally things take more time, more people are involved, the time cost for these people has to be considered. They also have bigger and better things that could be working on. What works for a small company to promote themselves doesn’t necessarily work for a massive global organisation, or just isn’t worth the trouble.

    sheppy’s last blog post..Change in attitude

  • http://russellcavanagh.com/2/ On the Money

    Surely Coke is imperiously ubiquitous enough … Don’t encourage them further, please!

    On the Money’s last blog post..Money News Round-Up Extra 12th February 2009

  • http://www.adoperationsonline.com Otilia @ AdOperationsOnline.com

    LOL @ On the Money :-D
    Seriously, how about the recently surfaced Twitter plans to charge for business accounts (it may or may not be the case, nobody knows yet) – what’s your take on that? Coke may simply be not interested in leveraging Twitter, but many other big brands obviously are – and they can be just the ones to build Twitter a business model.

    Otilia @ AdOperationsOnline.com’s last blog post..Ad Networks Quality: Vizi Swamped in Adult and Malware Ads from Oridian, via RightMedia Exchange

  • http://russellcavanagh.com/2/ On the Money

    … I’ll choose Pepsi in that case ….. Oops, forgot, same thing! Depends what the offered advantages are of business accounts. Something I’m not clear on.

    On the Money’s last blog post..Money News Extra 12th February 2009

  • Dean

    FWIW -

    - Twitter doesn’t protect brand-squatting and Coke would merely have to file a complaint with Twitter and they would get the accounts handed to them.

    - Sheppy is also dead on. It’s easy to criticize Coke for not “Twittering” but the complexities of Social Media in a giant multinational company are simply not that simple. Anyone who had worked for a large company understands the politics, bureaucracies and legalities when dealing with things like this.

    In fact, I bet right now at Coke HQ, there are 4 action committees overseeing 17 task forces in 38 countries to craft a social media strategy that will have to get approval from 3 levels of VP management who will assign budgetary and marketing responsibility to 3 division heads on investigating the potential deployment of thinking about setting up a Twitter account…

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