Category: Sector focus | 11th Mar 2009

Global soft drinks giant Coca Cola has revealed that emerging digital platforms are helping it promote its products to the lucrative youth market.

Addressing this week's Social Networking World Forum in London, the firm's global interactive marketing director Michael Donnelly explained that customer demand is the main factor behind its embracing of applications such as YouTube and Facebook.

He revealed that the company "started by collecting, learning, analysing and scaling what was going on in the world in social networks as well as in Coca-Cola".

On the back of this, a number of digital initiatives, including the creation of branded avatars on Second Life and a unique channel on YouTube, were rolled out, with Mr Connelly hailing them as a great success, particularly when it comes to bringing together the different marketing drives from different countries across the globe.

"We had brilliant marketers all over the world but they were decentralised in each country and, while they each had a social network, they were not sharing their experiences," he said.

At present, Coca Cola boasts the second most-popular page on Facebook, with more than 3.2 million people having been added as members over the past couple of years alone.

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