Coca-Cola’s division marketing director, John Wardley, has hit back at dissent among bloggers over its $18m launch campaign for the sugar-free variant Zero, saying the online marketing strategy fitted in with the tone of the campaign because it was about an individual sharing their point of view with the rest of the world.
The soft drink giant found itself at the receiving end of some consumer backlash for entering the blogging space with accusations that it is abusing the high-level communication and trust established between bloggers and the communities that gather around them.
Along with a traditional main media campaign, Coca-Cola ran street posters, chalk drawings and a website, www.thezeromovement.com.au.
Similar URLs were hijacked and a spoof site, called thezeromovementsucks.blogspot.com has sprung up which is selling t-shirts and getting postings from disgruntled consumers about the campaign.
Wardley stands by the decision to go with blogs, saying it wasn’t a random idea to use blogs by people who don’t understand their purpose.
“The reason we started this whole campaign in a blog is that it made sense creatively. It is the first time we have used blogs and I do think companies need to be cautious in using this medium and only do so when it makes sense in the context of the campaign idea. In the case of Coke Zero, it did. The whole idea behind blogging is to allow an individual to share their ideas and thoughts with the rest of the world. That’s why starting off with a blog made sense for this particular campaign,” he said.
He dismissed accusations that Coke was commercialising the blog space, saying the blogging medium has an agenda, and a point of view just like Coke has with Zero.
As he points out, Coke is not the first company to look at using blogs for marketing purposes.
Some of the complaints centred on the fact that Coca-Cola didn’t initially identify itself as the brand behind the Zero campaign.
“We were in a teaser phase and we didn’t disclose that it was Coke Zero for a few weeks—that’s the very nature of a teaser campaign and we always intended a couple of weeks into the tease to put Zero front and centre of the web page and that’s what we did,” Wardley said.
Coke’s corporate view is not to respond to the online campaigns, saying it has moved into the next phase of the campaign.
“The internet is a two-way communication with the consumer. Sometimes the feedback will be favourable and sometimes it won’t and that’s something we understand,” he said.
Kicking off last Sunday night, the campaign, created by Kindred, focuses on the Zero in the name with the slogan ‘The Zero Movement’, which asks questions such as ‘Why can’t we have a sick-of-work day?’, ‘Why can’t big nights come with zero morning afters?’ and ‘Why don’t relationships come with a gap year?’ It included a primetime ‘roadblock’ across networks Seven, Nine and Ten, plus 25 subscription TV channels and is believed to be the largest roadblock taken in Australia, along with outdoor advertising and internet marketing.
n To see B&T’s blog posting on the Coke Zero campaign, check out The Big Idea at www.bandt.com.au/blog. And for further information on the initial launch campaign see www.bandt.com.au.
