Coca-Cola: Website Designed

 

Names like Coca-Cola are household names. These brands automatically render up images of America, especially Coca-Cola with its many branding extras that the company has been able to put out over the years.

Coca-cola is a brand that doesn’t need an introduction. This brand started in a world much different than the world we live today. Now, we have the digital world, a world that is endless in possibilities and includes websites, blogs, and other digital assets that are designed to increase branding in the virtual environment.

No one can deny that the website of a brand is the most important part of this mix. No matter how good your podcasts, videos, and other assets are, your website should stand out.

 

 

When you go to Coca-Cola’s website, you are greeted with an attractive, minimalist design that focuses on what the brand is about: Coke (the drink of course!). It’s interesting that the Coca-Cola brand focuses solely on the soft drink on their website because most of their other advertising deviates from this notion.

Instead, their videos on YouTube and other digital media seem to focus more on the personality of the business rather than the drink itself. The idea in most of their ads is to “share a Coke” with others. This theme is still prevalent on their website, but first, the customer sees a statement about their product in which they say, “The refreshing taste of Coca-Cola beverages paired with new and rewarding experiences.”

This seems to create an intimate relationship between the great-tasting Coca-Cola product and the personality of the brand which seems to be all about sharing and caring.

There are other opportunities offered to their customers who visit their websites such as mobile app downloads and games, product facts, and more.

The site is modern while also traditional, simple but stocked with value. This reflects the dedication the company seems to have towards the physical product they create and the human interactivity of the business.

Aspects of Website Designed Model (Karayanni and Baltas, 2003)

#1. Content: We definitely agree that Coca-Cola website contains a lot of information related to the company, with content that will interest their customers for sure. A visitor could go to this site and know what the brand is about.

#2. Interactivity: This is one of the most important aspects of a site as you want part of the customer journey to take the customer to other places where you have some digital assets such as Facebook or Twitter. Coca-cola should improve this because they just featured the links to their social media in a place near the bottom that was barely noticeable.

#3. Multimedia Design: The more time that a user spends on your site, the greater chance of them remembering your site and visiting you again or even placing an order with you; and Coca-Cola does this brilliantly. The website is full of images and you wouldn’t  mind spending a few minutes there just to discover more and more.

#4. Navigation: Navigation on a website refers to how the menu is set up and how the viewer finds where they need to go. One of the most frustrating things is being on a website and not being able to figure out where to go.  Coca-Cola is very simple when it comes to this section, it is easier to navigate and find what we want to see.

 

Red Bull is giving us wings

Since the dawn of social media, brands have been trying to engage and interact with their prospective market leads, and customer bases in a way that is more humane. Companies don’t want to be seen as power hungry, instead, companies want to engage and interact by educating and personalizing their consumers’ online experience.

Engaging in social media is about being extremely open, creative and dynamic. To stay competitive on social media, brands need to be investing as a way to extend the brand personality to their customers.

While advertising and cultivating the image is still important, it’s  the interaction that creates loyal customers. Using social media to show customers that your business is influenced by what they say, think and feel about your products will amplify your brand’s message.

Instagram is easy engagement with audiences because it is easy to use when you’re on the go. It’smobile-exclusive and allows immediate editing of images you take on the move to post on the platform. Human beings prefer to gather and interpret information through sight, which is why visual marketing has become so important in recent years.

Red Bull is a brand that is associated with procrastination and the need for energy — last-minute studying, late-night partying, early morning meetings or classes, and the ability to keep you awake at almost any hour of the day.

Instagram users have always responded favorably to well-composed photographs. Red Bull’s photos, especially the ones related to extreme sports, pack so much energy into the frame that it appears as if the subject can’t be held in by the frame’s boundaries. The most engaging post was a photo of a cyclist riding down a cliff.

Red Bull has “regrammed” (reposting images previously taken for different purposes) photos from the most influential extreme sports photographers, including Christian Pondella. This is a great way to source awesome content and amplify the brand’s Instagram feed.

 Red Bull uses an awesome mix of photos and videos to capture moments. The post below is a video from their Red Bull Rampage event, made with French free biker Antoine Bizet. It captures his historic double backflip during one of the events and is one of the most engaging posts from this period. A photo probably would not do justice to the moment captured in this video.

Red Bull’s Instagram captions are very simple and succinct but at the same time a little edgy, which keeps things interesting. The post below was one of the most commented-on posts in the data period.

A majority of Red Bull’s posts do not even feature the drink. Their Instagram feed is representative of the lifestyle a Red Bull drinker is expected to have: energetic,impulsive, high-adrenaline and adventurous.

Red Bull is the highest-selling energy drink in the U.S., yet they hardly sell the drink on Instagram at all. The brand has managed to convey its value offerings through a very subtle–yet engaging–strategy on the platform.

 

Innovation makes Jack the better boy!

Creating relationships between brands and customers has become an important aspect of marketing nowadays. It is undeniable that brand communities are a big part in improving new products or services in companies. Moreover, it will lead to innovation in and of the company itself in the future.

With digital technology moving at the speed of light, brands have one common goal; being innovative and now, in order to challenge their competition. But innovation needs to be fostered internally. It can’t be faked. It needs to be part of a company’s culture, almost like standard operating procedure. That’s the challenge.

Companies are getting smarter, they are creating brands communities which essentially is the creation of a participatory experience for the customer. Instead of projecting the need for your product/service and value-driven content onto the customer and perpetuating the ‘us-them’ relationship, you’re dissolving boundaries and forming a ‘we’ experience – a community. You’re opening the door, welcoming them in for coffee, inviting feedback and providing a space for interaction with like-minded individuals.

With interactive communities, brands have the opportunity to truly listen to the customer. They can use what they learn to help develop the next focused marketing strategy, or even the next product! In an age where marketing is becoming increasingly customer-centric, online communities are merely the evolution of the standard online business website, with blog content, landing pages, and ecommerce.

Here are inspiring examples of online brand communities that have become thriving interactive environments in the digital world.

LEGO

User communities play a great role in creating new product ideas and innovations. What could be more enticing to a Lego enthusiast than having their design idea on the shelves – and being awarded a percentage of the product sales? With Lego Ideas, anyone who loves Lego, from age 5 to 95, can check out proposals, vote on their favourites, leave feedback, and even submit their own ideas! The most popular ones go to market.

This online community doesn’t just offer up fantastic market data for the brand, it also helps to keep  people interested with ongoing contests.

SEPHORA BEAUTY TALK AND BEAUTY BOARD

Sephora does an amazing job of making customers feel connected with their online community, Beauty Talk – a massive, well-organized forum where users can ask questions, share ideas, and have their beauty quagmires solved by other enthusiasts. Their Beauty Board offers other ways of engagement as well. Users upload pictures of themselves wearing Sephora products. The photos then link to the product page of all the items used.

The customers become instant brand ambassadors, inspiring others to use the products. Meanwhile, Sephora never have to lift a finger, all they do is create the platform for customers to share.

Online brand communities drive sales and engagement, PERIOD. It motivates customers to follow a brand. Building an interactive community takes a lot of upfront effort, but once it is in place, as you can see from given examples, it offers a gold mine of opportunities for marketing teams.

Shake it up

Are we digitally safe?

Nowadays, digital marketing has made a lot of impact in the commercial world, but what is exactly digital marketing? Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all of your online marketing efforts. Businesses leverage digital channels such as Google search, social media, email, and their websites to connect with their current and prospective customers.

The internet has changed people’s life style in many ways. The Internet has changed the face of digital media in the past decade. It has revolutionized communications, to the extent that it is now our preferred medium of everyday communication- ordering a pizza, buying a television, sharing a moment with a friend, sending a picture over instant messenger. In early days it was a static network designed to transport a small freight of bytes or a short message between two terminals and was basically a storage unit of information where content was published and maintained only by expert coders. Today, however, immense quantities of information are uploaded and downloaded over this gargantuan innovation, and the content is very much our own, for now we are the commentators, publishers and the creators.

In our opinion the biggest challenge in digital marketing is an increase in security risk.

Privacy has risen near the top of the agenda in step with an increasing awareness of the implications of using social media. A lot of the time, people started to use social media with no real idea of the dangers, and have wised up only through trial and error. Lately, inappropriate use of social media seems to hit the headlines every day. Celebrities posting inappropriate comments to their profiles, private pictures and tapes leaked to the Internet at large, companies displaying arrogance toward users, and even criminal activities involving private-data trafficking or social media exploitation. Contrary to what many people seem to have assumed, online security and privacy are critical, and we believe, will become even more important going forward. And, although every user needs privacy, the issue is particularly sensitive for minors.

On the other hand, we think the debate about whether social media use should be subject to an age requirement is somewhat pointless, given that most globally active platforms operate without age restrictions. The European regulatory framework is quite different from the United States and Asian codes. This can become a competitive drawback when the ground rules do not apply equally to all players.
Outside the scope of what the industry or regulators can do, it is vital that users themselves look after the privacy of their data. We believe the information is the user’s property, so the user is the only party entitled to control the collection, use, and disclosure of any information about him/herself. Some social networks seem to have forgotten this fact—they sell data, make it impossible to delete an account, or make it complex and difficult to manage one’s privacy settings. Everything should be a lot simpler and more transparent.
Social networks should continue to devote intense efforts to developing self-regulation mechanisms and guidelines to ensure that user information is safe. The main way of ensuring that social media are used appropriately is awareness. But awareness and user education will be of little use unless it becomes an absolute requirement that the privacy of the individual is treated as a universal value.

 

 

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton