Coke Gets Search Traction
Coca-Cola’s C2 brand had a brief shelf life after its launch four years ago, despite a Super Bowl ad and a Yahoo takeover, due to a strategic oversight.
“Search was conspicuously absent from the launch,” Carol Kruse, Coca-Cola vice president of global interactive marketing said this week at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York.
In sharp contrast, these days plotting search tactics is a primary element in Coke’s brand promotions, with multiple search terms tied to the brand name a key ingredient in that mix.
“You really need to fine tune your search strategy to fit usage adoption,” Kruse said.
She noted that 80% of Web browsing starts with a search, and search is an even more frequent habit with Coke’s South American consumers, particularly in Mexico and Columbia, than it is among its U.S. consumers. She also noted that it’s important to be aware of Web surfers’ search habits: 67% of Web user click on organic search areas, while 33% click on paid areas.
“It’s cooking with gas,” Kruse said. “It’s a great way to control your consumers.”
Coke has utilized dynamic logic studies to measure the impact of digital campaigns. And multiple consumer direct studies demonstrated a direct correlation between online advertising and purchase rates for Diet Coke, according to Kruse, who pointed to the Nielsen Household Panel in partnership with Yahoo and AOL as a primary tool.
Kruse views online promotion as a bridge from traditional media, such as Super Bowl ads, to engage customers. This year, she noted, 10 billion packages of various Coke brands will carry the MyCokeRewards.com imprimatur to increase impressions.
An alliance with SearchRev helped Coke improve its search response rates. By employing variations on brand search terms—primarily adding generic terms—Coke tripled its conversion rate for Coke searches, according to SearchRev CMO Eduardo Llach.
In the case of its recent Heart Health campaign around the Oscars, which included raffling Heidi Klum’s red dress, Llach said that 60% of the converted search results were related to the heart health topic.
“Correlate what you’re doing offline to what you’re doing online,” Llach advised.
Coke currently employs 100 search variations for MyCokeRewards. And that tactic increased registration on the site from 4,000 surfers per week to 26,000 per week in a six-week period after those variations were created.
