On this week’s show we talk to Ashley Brown, Director of Digital Communications and Social Media at the Coca-Cola Company. Ashley talks about his work with one of the world’s largest brands. Follow Ashley on Twitter @ashbrown77.
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
Jordan: Welcome to the Engage Show Episode 59! This is Jordan Raynor, alongside Patrick Ruffini…
Patrick: Howdy.
Jordan: …and Eric Wilson.
Eric: Hey everyone.
Jordan: And we have a really special guest today that I’m very excited to have on the show. Ashley Brown is the director of Digital Communications and Social Media at the Coca-Cola Company. Ashley leads Coke’s Corporate Digital and Social Media strategy and that includes everything from digital storytelling to social media training monitoring insight and social media platforms for the Coca-Cola Company. At Coke. Ashley has helped create the companies first enterprise social media listening and monitoring program and guided the first major overhaul of Coke’s website strategy in more than a decade. Ashley also has a bit of political experience in his background. Ashley, welcome to the program!
Ashley: Thank you very much Jordan. I’m happy to be here.
Jordan: Great. So I want to start talking about kind of Coke as a brand and how you all structure your social media team. So I would imagine at a brand as big as Coca-Cola there are quite a few layers to how your social media teams are structured. So does each product, and does each brand, have its own separate social media team and how does your job directing the social media efforts for the corporation differ from someone in your position for one of Coke’s products?
Ashley: Right. I wish that everyone had their own team — unfortunately that’s not the case. So we have a central corporate team that looks after like you said our dot com strategy, our training programs, our listening digital PR. And then there is another mirror team of mine if you will, on the marketing side and their specific function is to help each of our brands activate on the various social media channels. So you can imagine we have $15 billion dollar brands, about 150 brands all around the world, at various states in the maturity of their social media programs, so that team also has a really really big job in helping them just sort of to get on and get active on the social media channels that are tops in their part of the world. So um, I don’t know do you want me to go into a little bit more about what my team does?
Jordan: Yeah, I think that’d be interesting.
Ashley: So, I’m excited to sit where I do because we get really that 360 view. So we get to talk about our sustainability programs, things like 5 by 20, we’ve made a pretty public commitment as a company to empower 5 million women by 2020 so that’s something that I personally invested in and I’m excited to be able to help that program. All of our other CSR opportunities, we support those. We’re really focused on our side about how we evolve our public relations and public affairs practices, into sort of a PR and public affairs 2.0 if you will. Because we really need to move as quickly as we can into a world where digital is everyone’s job and I think probably most people at brands would agree with that. Ultimately we want to create a space where social media really isn’t in anyone’s job title anymore it’s just what everyone does.
Patrick: Amen to that. I would imagine you do quite a bit of listening to social media buzz at Coke and how with the volume I think with your size and scale how do you make sense of all of that chatter?
Ashley: Yeah so you know I can give you between March and October of 2011 we tracked something like 8 million mentions of Coca-Cola. So it’s really hard to see the trees through the forest. You know some of it has just been we look for trends; we look for words that shouldn’t be there. It’s really interesting when you look at sort of big data or aggregates you’re able to immediately spot some things that stick out like sore thumbs so from a protect the corporation perspective we do a lot of searching for unexpected relationships between words. And then you know a huge part of our job here in Atlanta is to help each of our markets do that listening at local market level. So where as we might miss something because we’re looking at global view my colleagues in Mexico have a much better shot of teasing out trends or spotting emerging issues or seeing something really awesome they can respond to because they’re looking at a much more defined data set. So I think the sweet spot for listening is really going to be that capability building to empower everyone who works for you company to be a listener and to look at data in a way where they can understand what they’re seeing.
Jordan: Sounds a lot like political campaigns and how they’re structured.
Patrick: How does, I imagine, are you buying kind of tools off the shelf or are these like home grown systems? What your saying is it sounds a lot like, when you say big data, we had a big panel down at SXSW on big data, but it really is coming to fruition in a big way so I’m interested in what you’re using to analyze all of that?
Ashley: We’ve adopted this policy at Coke so that we reuse what we have first, buy off the shelves second, and don’t blast. The tool that we use, we use SMS. We selected that about a year and a half ago for a number of reasons but you know it’s an off the shelf tool that we purchased. We work really closely with the SMS team to configure the system so that it works for us. We’ve definitely made some tweaks and some changes. You know I’m also not going to tell you guys we figured it all out this is a struggle we have 700,000 employees around the world so getting every market in every part of the world on board is a multi-year process for us. We’re still working through the kinks we’re still finding things that don’t’ work all the time. This is a huge part of my team’s job. A word of caution for any brand would be don’t think that you’re going to be able to roll out a first rate listening system over night it’s going to take you a long time to do it.
Eric: So Ashley one of the challenges with listening and especially the volume that you’re dealing with is teasing out are who the people who you should be listening to who are the influencers. So I’m curious as to how you and Coke generally look to determine someone’s influence on a space like Twitter or Facebook.
Ashley: I have a PR bias I have to admit to that right off the bat. I come to social, in the social era from traditional PR. I’ve been a consumer PR person for a really long time. I tend to think influential people in social media are usually influential offline. Anyone can sort of self promote themselves to a high Klout score I think. But talking to a lot of people doesn’t mean that you actually move the needle. So, I know that on the marketing side we’re constantly on the lookout for you know who are these important fans but, and on the PR side we look at who are these super influencers if you will. But the more research we do, actually the more we find that these are just influential people in general, so I’m always really skeptical when you meet somebody that has 250,000 followers on Twitter but they don’t have any position that would seem to lend themselves to having that type of following. There’s obviously always going to be the occasional outlier to that but that’s sort of the rule of thumb that I have. And I’d love to hear what you guys think about that.
Patrick: So there’s this intense debate I think it seems like in the community about the influencer theory that you can find these influencers and that they’ll immediately spread your message but I think and I actually talked about this on the podcast last week that there’s this study that you really want to find local influential people like that are influential in their social circles and that those people are distributed everywhere so you’re not really talking to the Brian Solaces of the world you’re not really talking to those folks, you’re trying to find the people that are trusted within communities and within networks of 100 or 200 people. Is that how you kind of think about it or I mean have you paid attention to this debate that’s been raging I know there was a Buzzfeed study that came out but people are trying to knock down the influencer theory a little bit.
Ashley: Well I mean it’s such a tricky thing because you know you might find one person with one friend but that friend may be the president of the United States. It’s, you know there’s this old saw in PR if you want to know what people are saying about you read the paper and you know it seems to be that way in this sort of influencer world. We’re also like; social media is like television circa 1953. There’s a lot of ethical quandaries out there. There’s a lot of pay for play, there’s a lot of attracting followers for followers sake, so it’s an ethical swamp if you will. At Coke we’ve taken this position like we’re not going to pay to get coverage. We wouldn’t do that in a PR world and we’re not going to do that in the social world. So we do we have research that people who follow and fan and like us are more engaged about Coke and more likely to drink our product and more likely to recommend it to their friends with a factor of like 8. So I think there is something to be said that if you attract fans the hard way the fans you’re going to get are truly going to be your fans.
Jordan: Yeah it’s interesting. It’s interesting comparing it to the early days of television and the fact is we’re at a very early state in the social media area and there’s a lot to learn and a lot of innovation happening. I want to shift gears for a second and talk about, I’d love to hear your take on maybe a social media campaign or initiative that you’re proud of that you’ve gotten to work on at Coca-Cola that’s really stood out in your mind as a really big success during at your time at Coke?
Ashley: I’m actually relatively new at Coke so I’d have to back off there’s nothing I’ve done right now that I want to blow my trumpets about. That I think is in my near future so I want to take the humble path on that one and so stay tuned.
Jordan: We’ll have you back on to talk about it on a later date.
Ashley: I would love that and I think we’ll have lots of talk about. So thanks if you will.
Jordan: So you were at SXSW I know we already mentioned SXSW and the panel we had on big data I’m interested to get your take away. We talked about this on the podcast last week about our big takeaways and big ideas we took away with from SXSW 2012. Is there anything that stood out to you as a big trend that you took away from SXSW 2012 coming back to Atlanta after the conference?
Ashley: There’s two things I’m super super excited about that I think are going to take us to the next level if we can find ways to execute them well. The first is proximity location. If you think about if we can get past the sort of creepy factor of brands and or your phone and or your cell phone carrier are always know where you, that opens an amazing potential to improve people’s lives. You never are lost again, you’ll always know where the doctor is if you need it. You know you’re at the RNC or the DNC and it’s able to say you know that’s Senator X that you’ve been wanting to find they’re just three people to the right. Proximity location is going to be really really really cool stuff. I want a diet Cherry Coke. Your phone is able to tell you where the closest place is to buy that product. You know I saw that you checked into Hotel X you know maybe you might like the rooms better at Hotel Y you know that’s disruptive advertising. I just think it has amazing potential for the world, and will be a utility I think in five years.
Patrick: Are you a Highlight user?
Ashley: I’m not Highlight user but I think I should be.
Patrick: I mean we have raging internal debate here at the office on Highlight.
Eric: And sort of pivoting off of the south by trends what are the trends that effect brand marketing beyond sort of the geo-location and social data that we’ve already touched on.
Ashley: I’m really excited about augmented reality I don’t know what you guys think about that and what the potential is. But this whole notion that we can take something that’s static like a billboard or a bus shelter or a subway poster or a can. You know, we’re going to make the cans anyway so we might as well make something cool about it you know that type thing, so I think augmented reality has the ability to create extended brand experiences that are really really potentially amazing and awesome. Have you all ever given any thought to that, to augmented reality?
Patrick: You know, Jordan.
Jordan: Go ahead Patrick.
Patrick: You know I would say a little bit and I’ve used the Yelp feature and I wasn’t that impressed by it but I know like this other like this sort of related trend the internet of things, where we are increasingly finding ways with mobile apps to interface more effectively with the offline world. I was just thinking at a very practical level the ability to park my car using my iPhone and pay for parking has been absolutely disruptive to parking garages in DC. And so because I don’t carry around any cash what so ever and so in the future the ability to pay with your mobile device I think it’s all this stuff is bringing this stuff closer and bringing brands closer to, bringing the internet closer to brands, and allowing us to interact with these objects in ways that we couldn’t before using QR codes, using mobile apps, using these kind of tighter connections between the physical and the virtual world which I think are really cool. I think certainly it’s going to develop.
Eric: And Ashley you raised a very important point about the sort of creepiness factor in all of this, and I think brands and brand marketers have a very key position in the leading edge of getting consumers who are also voters accustomed to this sort of technology because as you know political preference is a sacred thing to a lot of Americans and so I think as they become more comfortable with things like augmented reality through the brands that they interact with we’ll see them become more comfortable with it in the political space. So that’s a real challenge for us is just being mindful of how people not only view the technology but also view political ideology.
Ashley: I think you hit on something important which was, you have to bring value to people you have to make their lives better some way. I think where brands go wrong in social media just like any type of marketing or any other PR is they expect people to care about something because they do and in reality it’s… I’m really glad you sponsored that event like I don’t care. When we think about social experiences or new technologies that we want to test or use or create an experience around we always ask ourselves you know how does that benefit the consumer. How are they surprised or how are they delighted or how is their life better because we were a part of it. So I think your example of parking your car or paying your parking with your phone those are really smart applications of technology that make your life measurably better. You know Square is another thing that sort of springs to mind, almost a delightfully old school solution to a fifty year old problem, but will probably hasten, if it really takes off, will probably hasten the demise of paper money.
Jordan: Yeah, disrupting money, you know it’s interesting. So you know Eric alluded to some of the applications this technology has potentially to voters and the political world. And you’ve actually had some experience volunteering on the Kerry campaign in 2004. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on what kind of overlap there is for the political world to brand marketing and vice versa and what application and what lessons can be learned and exchange between those two different but I would argue somewhat similar worlds.
Ashley: I don’t know if you’ll be surprised or not when I tell you that there’s a ton of overlap between brand marketing and the world of brands and brand PR and politics because you know if you think about it at its most base level our consumers vote for us 1.7 billion times a day. And they have a choice right? I mean they go into a store, a physical place, and they have every choice in the world. They can choose any one of a number of our competitors and they vote for us and yet marketers and PR people have historically thought in terms of a campaign or a cyclical thing. I’m going to spin up for holiday and then I’m going to spin up for back to school and then I’m going to spin up for Black Friday and spin up for Cyber Monday. As political has increasingly become a 24/7/365 day thing, we have to think that way too because you know our consumers aren’t making those choices just at holiday. We really have to be always on. And consumers are becoming just more sophisticated and they can see through obfuscation, and we don’t accept anymore or at least we say we don’t accept anymore that type of behavior from politicians and people are increasingly not taking it from brands either. I think that the political world is teaching brands actually quite a bit how to communicate and work with consumers.
Patrick: It’s certainly an unforgiving market in politics, because you either win or you lose and there’s no market share gain if you go from 45 to 48 percent, well that’s not really good enough. It’s like victory or else. And it’s usually 50 percent or you have to beat the other guy. There’s plenty of niche brands out there and so it’s certainly interesting dynamics so there’s an unsavory aspect to politics because of all the negative advertising. We not only have to win in terms of market share gain but we also have to win against the other guy so I think that’s probably one maybe minor difference but I know you guys are also extremely competitive.
Ashley: Yeah and I mean and I would say that you can definitely be a politician that beats to your own drum if you will. You can be a Ron Paul or a Wellstone and be really successful in your little niche part of the world, but, you know, how many times has Ron Paul run for president? You can be a niche brand but if you’re going to play at a global level or a national level that’s a different thing entirely. Niche brands can be very very successful in their little part of the world but it’s when they grow that you know you have to think about it like a campaign and people don’t have to drink you.
Patrick: You said something I thought was really interesting before about how you actually said people are eight times more likely to buy Coke, presumably your social media fans. How are you guys, I mean you go to SXSW as well and there’s so many panels about how you measure social media ROI. Do you think of that not as being cracked?
Ashley: I think the short answer is no and I think we’re trying but I don’t think we’ve figured it out to be perfectly honest and I think there are unreasonable expectations of social media. This is something I go on and on about from time to time. No one ever says how many Cokes did that billboard sell, or how many cars did that television commercial sell. Social is media. It’s not anything more. It’s about awareness, it’s about recall, it’s about landing your message, it’s about expanding your social license to operate. It’s chasing paper tigers to try to say “wow that Facebook page sold eighty-eight thousand cans of Coke today.” You’re never going to get there. And I think it’s unfair to even try.
Jordan: Interesting, interesting take. I agree with you and you know it’s interesting the critics who say that it’s impossible to tie ROI to social media I think are often won over with that argument and as well the argument that anything is measurable it is social compared to other, other more traditional platforms. This has been a really interesting conversation Ashley and thank you so much again for joining us. You can follow Ashley on twitter, I highly recommend it. You are @ashbrown77 is that correct?
Ashley: That’s right.
Jordan: Perfect. And thank you so much for being on the program hopefully we’ll have you on at a later date to update us on some of the projects you guys are working on. You can follow us everywhere @engagedc and we will talk to you all next week. Thanks again, Ashley!
Ashley: Thank you very much!
