UCD QUINN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS MIS20040 – eMarketing & Social Networking

Abubakr Elsayed 11380031

abubakr.elsayed@ucdconnect.ie

Small World Machines

“Bringing India & Pakistan Together”

1

Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 2

Small World Machines: Dispensing Happiness ...................................................................................... 3

Analysis of Social Media ........................................................................................................................ 4

YouTube ................................................................................................................................................. 4

Facebook ................................................................................................................................................. 5

Twitter ..................................................................................................................................................... 6

Instagram ................................................................................................................................................ 6

Campaign Results ................................................................................................................................... 7

Recommendation .................................................................................................................................... 8

Takeaways............................................................................................................................................... 9

Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 10

2

Introduction Coca Cola is one of the world’s most admired and well-known brands with a long history

dating back more than a 125 years. In fact it has been documented as world’s 2nd most

understood word after ‘okay’ (Bhasin, 2011). The Coca Cola syrup was first created by

pharmacist John S. Pemberton and coined by his accountant Frank Robinson in 1886 (The

Coca-Cola Company, 2011). Asa Candler later acquired The Coca Cola Company in 1892

and incorporated as a Georgia corporation which was the humble beginning of the beverage

conglomerate that we know today (The Coca-Cola Company, 2011).

Today the Coca Cola Company is headquartered in Atlanta Georgia, currently lead by CEO

Muhtar Kent. At present Coca Cola is the world’s 4th most valuable brand, the world’s 81st

biggest public traded company and with market valuation of $168.7 billion (Forbes, 2014).

Coca Cola employ an impressive 130,600 employees worldwide. The Coca Cola Company

owns licenses and markets a product portfolio of more than 3500 products under the banner

of 500 brands (Bhasin, 2011). Their products range from non-alcoholic beverages, largely

sparkling beverage but also an assortment of still beverages, such as water, enhanced waters,

juices, ready to drink coffees and teas, and sports and energy drinks (Forbes, 2014). Diet

Coke, Sprite and Fanta are some of the commonly known non-alcoholic sparkling beverage

brands they own (Forbes, 2014).

(The Coca-Cola Company, 2015)

3

Small World Machines: Dispensing Happiness

Coca Cola is very well known for its soft drinks nearly as much as its social media

campaigns. At the beginning of 2009 Coca Cola launched "Open Happiness", a globally

integrated advertising campaign. The campaign was launched with the objective of increasing

sales of soft drinks of the Coca Cola Company. With the world economic recession in early

2008, the weakened economy was slowing down soft drink sales, the "Open Happiness"

campaign invited people around the world to refresh themselves with a Coke and continue to

enjoy the simple pleasures of life. Today Open Happiness has become akin to slogan for

Coca Cola. Many sub project and campaigns have since launched. The campaign I have

chosen to analyse is the ‘Small World Machines’ campaign.

In March 2013 Coca-Cola set out to break down barriers

and create a simple moment of connection between two

nations, India and Pakistan. The initiative "Small World

Machines" provided a real time communications portal

between people in India and Pakistan and showed that

what unites us is stronger than what sets us apart. The key

to engaging with each other through the machines was

simple: people in India and Pakistan could complete a

task, like touching hands, drawing peace, love, and

happiness symbols – together (Coca Cola, 2013). And at

the end they can a Coca Cola together and share the

happiness.

The Small World Machines campaign is about diplomacy a new kind of diplomacy, social

diplomacy. It is about breaking down barriers and creating simple moments of connections

between people of conflict. As said Aradhya a commentator on similar ad by Google that

touched the same subject said.

“It brought nations together in 3 minutes. The politicians of both countries couldn't do this in

66 years.” (Chugani, 2013)

4

Analysis of Social Media Coca Cola utilise majority of well-known social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube,

Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and Flickr. The diagram below displays the number of social

media used by Coca Cola. While Coca Cola use all the different platforms they channel their media

campaigns through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

YouTube YouTube was the first social media platform Coca Cola joined. They set up their YouTube

channel in 1st of January 2006. At present their YouTube channel has 467,603 subscribers

with a whopping 553,645,926 views. Pepsi, Coca cola‘s biggest rival joined YouTube in 1st

of November 2005, 2 month earlier than Coco Cola. Although Pepsi enjoys about 25% larger

subscription base of 732,432 subscribers, Coca Cola’s video content receives more than 50%

larger viewing than Pepsi (211,255,773 views)

In the first 15 days of the launch of the campaign the video achieved 1,354,659 views. As of

today the campaign video has received 2,886,164 views and 2839 comments. I am little

surprised the video did not receive more views but with little research I was reminded that not

everyone India has access to the Internet. In India internet penetration was only about 17% in

2013 (Internet Live Stats, 2013) which is very low. On the other hand in Pakistan YouTube is

blocked and once again internet penetration is 11% even lower than India. Considering the

circumstances Coca Cola did very well achieving those figures especially for the video to

become on the top 10 trending videos on YouTube.

5

Facebook

(Social Samosa, 2013)

The ‘Small World Machines’ video was launched via Facebook on the 19th of May 2013. In

the first 15 days of the campaign the video received 26,205 likes, 6608 shares and Coca

Cola’s Facebook page received a staggering 1,676,689 new likes.

I attempted to conduct my own research and to find the video post of Small world Machines

by Coca Cola, due to Facebook not having such great search options for videos and posts, it was difficult to locate. According to LocoBuzz and other trusted sources such Leo Burnett, the advertising agency that worked with Coca Cola to create this campaign have provided

the following statistics.

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Twitter (Social Samosa, 2013)

In relation to Twitter within 15 days Coca-Cola’s twitters followers sored. Followers increase from

759,236 to 793.609, 34,373 increase. Famous prolific Indian and Pakistani figures tweeted and

welcomed Coca Cola’s imitative as a positive step forward. During the Campaign there was 25%

increase in worldwide mentions of Coke or Coca Cola within tweets. It also became one of the top

trending topics on twitter.

Instagram Coca Cola have 484,333 followers have on Instagram, while Pepsi only have 68,800

followers. That's 7 times less than Coca Cola. From My research Coca cola did not use

Instagram as a platform to utilise the outreach of the small world machines. Instagram is

a very popular platform among millennials and Coca Cola should do more to integrate Instagram in

their future media Campaigns

7

Campaign Results The small world machines campaign memorably became the highest-shared story in the history of

coca-cola.com.

Over 10,000 Cokes were distributed but more importantly the campaign was witnessed by

10,000 attendees in the live event and created 700 connections across the borders.

The campaign reached more than 18 million Facebook and Twitter user.

The effort reached more than 18 million Facebook and Twitter users.

The video accomplished nearly 3 million YouTube views and counting.

More than 58,163,753 earned media impressions were gained.

55% of total reach came from India and Pakistan.

The campaign received 4860 unique mentions on online outlets such as new websites, TV

broadcasts, blogs and forums

The Small world machines campaign broke Coca Cola Company’s site traffic record of

5.5mins spent on the site. Indians and Pakistanis during the campaign spent an average of

7.38minutes and 9.33minutes respectively on the Coca Cola’s website.

This all helped increase Coca Cola’s brand awareness and enhance Coca Cola brand equity in

the view of the public in the respective countries. But more importantly, the campaign

facilitated the beginning of a discussion from both groups Indian and Pakistani’s discussed

togetherness and peace. (Benjamin, 2013)

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Recommendation

I noticed that Coca Cola don't always utilise and leverage all the social media platform they are part

of. It may be that some platforms might suite certain campaigns more than others which is

understandable. But Coca Cola can increase its reach by syncing the efforts of the social media teams

in place to have an even larger resonance in the online community as Coca Cola may miss out on

certain customers and potential customers if they don't communicate regularly with customers

Coca Cola’s socially responsible advertising is what society wants today from companies. They want

companies that not only provide jobs but also get involved within the community and public sphere.

This is one of the main reason that make Coca Cola successful along with its iconic message of

positivity and happiness. But embarking on tackling difficult issues such as the Indian-Pakistan

discourse can have a grave back lash if the sufficient research is not done prior to such campaigns.

And Coca Cola are to be commended for that, they really put their hearts into their campaigns. Coca

Cola should always strive to do the extensive research when embarking on such projects as cutting

corners can have grave consequences.

While Coke is a standard product what makes them more successful than Pepsi is that they tailor their

message to every audience whether it's the happy machines from the University ads to The Small

world Machines in India and Pakistan. Their message always resonates with the audience as it touches

the right chords. This glo-local approach to their media campaigns resonate will with customers and

Coca Cola should continue with this approach.

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Takeaways

In analysing the reach of the Small World Machines campaign and other successful viral campaigns,

one question comes to mind what makes a campaign go viral? According to Stephen Voltz and Fritz

Grobe in their book The Viral Video Manifesto, there are four rules to achieving a successful viral

campaign, Coca Cola’s SMW ad touches on all four rules (2012).

1. Be true: the campaign is clearly real, the emotions are real and it concerns a real conflict (India –

Pakistan troubled relations)

2. Don’t waste my time: the strife between India and Pakistan is still relevant today, and the video

gets to the point quickly. Coca Cola have Indians and Pakistanis narrate message of the

commercial and emotion. The video length of a marketing campaign is important, as the graph

points out as the length of video increase interaction or viewership is reduced. But it depends

what kind of video content it is. The deeper you delve into the raw data it get more complicated.

Personally speaking like many who commented I watched the video more than 10 times the

message is beautiful and brings tears of happiness to one’s eyes. I think it would have been

difficult to reduce the message to smaller length of time without giving it justice.

(Hornung, 2014)

3. Be unforgettable: Coca Cola dared to do something different, their use of Interactive Coca Cola

vending machines to bring two conflicting nations together over drink of Coke is truly something

unforgettable and unprecedented. The captured the moment with all the emotions happiness and

positivity. We haven’t seen anything like this before.

4. It’s all about humanity: Emotional connection is the key to sharing. The emotional connection

we see from people in India and Pakistan of all ages interacting together and sharing smiles and

happiness is genuine. Everyone can relate to that. It certainly restored my faith in humanity.

10

Bibliography Bhasin, K., 2011. 15 Facts About Coca-Cola That Will Blow Your Mind. [Online]

Available at: http://www.businessinsider.com/facts-about-coca-cola-2011-6?op=1&IR=T

[Accessed 3 March 2014].

Coca Cola, 2013. Small World Machines -- Bringing India & Pakistan Together. [Online]

Available at: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/videos/coca-cola-small-world-machines-bringing-

india-pakistan-together-ytts_4voudime

[Accessed 6 March 2014].

Forbes, 2014. Coca Cola. [Online]

Available at: http://www.forbes.com/companies/coca-cola/

[Accessed 6 March 2015].

Hornung, Y., 2014. The optimal length for video marketing content? As short as possible. [Online]

Available at: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2014/05/02/optimal-length-video-marketing-content-

short-possible/

[Accessed 7 March 2015].

Internet Live Stats, 2013. India Internet Users. [Online]

Available at: http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/india/

[Accessed 8 March 2015].

Social Samosa, 2013. Coca-Cola Small World Machines – Bringing India and Pakistan Together

[Infographic]. [Online]

Available at: http://www.socialsamosa.com/2013/07/coca-cola-small-world-machines-bringing-india-

and-pakistan-together-infographic/

[Accessed 7 March 2015].

The Coca-Cola Company, 2011. 125 years of sharing happiness, Altanta: The Coca-Cola Company.

The Coca-Cola Company, 2015. Our Compay. [Online]

Available at: http://www.coca-colacompany.com/our-company/

[Accessed 4 March 2015].

Voltz , S. & Grobe, F., 2012. The Viral Video Manifesto: Why Everything You Know Is Wrong and

How to Do What Really Works. s.l.:McGraw Hill.