Coke’s “Share a Coke” campaign
It’s pretty much guaranteed that the person reading this right now has, at some point rummaged through a shelf of chilled dark brown beverages like a desperate scavenger, scouring the icy depths in vain for a label with that most precious collection of letters on it; a corporate, gimmicky mimicry of your name.
Gimmick it may be, but it was undeniably a huge success. Just by sticking 250 names on bottles coke reversed a decade long decline in people buying their products; sales went up 2.5%. Part of the reason for this success was that people took to social media to do coke’s advertising for them, sharing bottles with their own names, giving them to friends or “meme-ing” unusual names.
Coke bottles and cans with names on became pretty much ubiquitous on every social network, ideal for the brand as they’re instantly recognisable and had to put minimal effort into reaching a vast audience of young people.
Starbucks’ strong social strategy
Starbucks is often, and quite rightly, hailed as having one of the strongest social media presences of any beverage brand. It engages with customers regularly, is transparent and direct and who hasn’t seen a Starbucks cup on Facebook or Instagram?
They also have mystarbucksidea.com, a site dedicated to listening to customers and finding ways to improve.
Again, it’s about getting people to do it for you, which is easier once you’ve personalised your product. Both Coke and Starbucks have done this exceptionally well. Many, more cynical individuals than myself, have questioned whether Starbucks employees purposefully spell names wrong in oder to nudge people into sharing their cup on social media. Either way, posts like the one below show how they appear human and can get you into a coffee shop without feeling like you’re being dragged there to buy something.
A more detailed breakdown of everything Starbucks does right is here.
Anchor Brewing Company
Anchor Brewing Company, a brewery based in San Francisco, went from little or no social media presence at the beginning of 2013, to more than 100,000 Likes on Facebook, with potential customers engaging 26,000 times over the course of this year. It’s these powerful insights that social media monitoring tools, such as Websays, are able to provide.
Now they have nearly 250,000 Likes on Facebook where they post between once and twice a day, and more than 50,000 followers on Twitter, where they seem to spend most of their time tactfully informing customers that the law sadly prohibits them from shipping their precious nectar to parched Anchor enthusiasts.
They received a great deal of user generated content which they promoted regularly, and entered into friendly competition on social media with their competitors over sports. As beer is an inherently social drink, their social campaigns gained a great deal of lift, and their hashtag #RaiseYourAnchor became associated with high quality beer and thus led to an increase in sales.