There is no doubt that Coca-Cola is one of the most active brands in the advertising market since it invests a large amount of money in advertisements that manage to position itself prominently. The objective of Coca-Cola’s marketing and advertising strategy is to make the brand and its products visible. Coca-Cola uses many different means such as its official website, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and some other such platforms in carrying out its marketing needs. With this, the positioning of Coca-Cola in the market is clear, it places them at the top of the consumer’s top of mind. Obviously, with all this, it is seen that Coca-Cola’s positioning strategy throughout its history has been a success.
Starting with owned media, these are all those media, platforms, or communication channels created by the brand to interact with the customer or user. “Owned media carry communication messages from the organizations to internet users on channels that are owned and, thus, at least partially controlled by the company” (Frost, Fox, and Strauss, 2019). This category includes all those Coca-Cola websites and platforms, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola.com, Coca-Cola Journey, coke.com, and its social media.
On the other hand, there are paid media, which are those external third-party channels that brands pay to be able to advertise and achieve their objectives, thus complementing their media. “Paid media are properties owned by others who are paid by the organization to carry its promotional messages” (Frost, Fox, and Strauss, 2019). As examples of this category, American Idol was part of its marketing strategy since American Idol is famous for including a Coca-Cola in each of the judge’s hands. Now that these programs are seen online via Hulu, Netflix, and more, this can also be considered paid online media product placement. Also, Coca-Cola has had the opportunity to promote its products through Netflix series, such as Stranger Things. “Coca-Cola worked with Stranger things to promote the third season of the popular ’80s-themed Netflix Original TV series’ with a takeover style approach to its social media – including the introduction (or reintroduction) of New Coke” (Cole, 2019 ).
The earned media are those that an organization obtains through external channels, or that do not belong to it, being the result of the efforts made to highlight its presence on the Internet. “Earned media are when individual conversation become the channel: messages about a company that is generated by social media authors, traditional journalists on media websites and by internet users who share opinions, experiences, insights, and perceptions on websites and mobile applications” (Frost, Fox, and Strauss, 2019). An example of earned media in Coca-Cola was the launch of their products with people’s names, which created a campaign called “Share a Coke”. “One of the best examples of earned media marketing comes to us from Coca-Cola and their “Share a Coke” campaign. This is the campaign in which they released a range of coke cans with people’s names on them and asked them to share a coke with a friend” (Cobain, 2017). Millions of people snapped and shared this hashtag in their stories, making it viral and very popular.
Another example to consider within this category is a vending machine that asks for hugs instead of money has been the original Coca-Cola action, designed by Ogilvy & Mather Singapore, where user participation and virality are achieved through social media have been essential to achieving the success achieved. “Coca-Cola’s video of “Hug Me” vending machine in Singapore garnered around 112 million impressions within a week. There is no other way that a brand can get so much visibility in a week’s time” (Tiwari, 2020).
Organic search refers to search results that appear in search engines naturally, without being influenced by paid advertising. Organic search results are ranked based on their relevance to the search term. After seeing the results of Coca-Cola’s organic search traffic on SEMrush.com, and engagement on the internet with the brand, on BuzzSumo.com, it can be seen that even thousands of people make searches, interact with the company on social networks, make mentions (hashtags), enter related links With Coca-Cola, and share information and/or advertising. As many have known, the social network in which the public is most engaged with the company is Facebook. However, Coca-Cola has an authority score of 70/100, which is a proprietary metric used to measure the overall quality of domain and influence on SEO. The score is based on the number of backlinks, referring domains, organic search traffic, and other data.
A Coca-Cola Blog 