Coca-Cola Kicks Off 'Share A Coke' Summer Campaign in China

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Shanghai -- Coca-Cola unveiled its summer campaign on Tuesday with the localization of its global "Shake A Coke" initiative in China.

Unlike Western markets in Australia and Europe that use consumer names like Zoe or Dan, Coke's packaging in China feature nicknames such as "cool dude," "fans," and "artistic youth," among many others.

To drive social awareness of its new packaging, Coke has launched a four-day contest to get its more than 105, 700 Sina Weibo fans to repost the nickname that catches their eye on the microblog.

The soft drink company will pick 99 Weibo fans who participated and send them a bottle with the nickname of their choice including a mystery gift.

Coca-Cola also deployed search marketing on Baidu so that the right-hand side of its results page features the TVC of its summer campaign as well as a link to the campaign site.

The campaign site displays customized descriptions of all the nicknames to facilitate easy sharing across Sina and Tencent Weibo as well as RenRen.

Amy Chen, interactive marketing director at Coca-Cola Greater China, says the summer campaign will run for three months and they will be rolling out various initiatives in the coming weeks.

Chen was also at the SES Shanghai conference to talk about the importance of real-time content marketing and brand engagement for social media in China.

Some of the points shared during her presentation include:

• Technology has changed brand storytelling from telling consumers what they should buy and why to a strategy where the consumer is put on a level footing with the brand by disseminating and sharing a common message.
• This has been characterized by a shift from brands broadcasting to consumers to a position where brands listen to the stories consumers are already telling, reflected through their online interactions. "You must speak the same language as consumers when creating campaigns."
• Although Tencent's WeChat is rising in popularity, she advised that brands should remain platform agnostic. "If your communication is good, it doesn't matter which social platforms you use to receive customer response."
• Brands should nurture genuine trust from consumers, Chen notes. For example, if a brand tries to acquire fans by offering the chance to win an iPad, many might join initially but would leave your brand account immediately once the promotion is over.
• The concept of trans media and storytelling - humanizing your brand communications is a key part of any social media strategy. For Coke, this means using its nickname "Xiao Ke," which is how local Chinese would refer to its brand in the country.