FIGARODIGITAL.CO.UK
‘Manage the Present and Invent the Future’ is the title of your conference presentation. What
can we expect to hear about at the event?
& LISTEN (TO YOUR CONSUMERS)
STOP, LOOK Simon Miles, Digital Director
at Coca-Cola Enterprises, will be among the keynote speakers at the Figaro Digital Marketing Conference on 17 July. He tells us how the 128-year-old brand stays relevant in the 21st century, discusses communities and technology,
and
explains why even Coke’s marketing strategy isn’t immune to the British weather
I’ll be addressing a conundrum facing everyone working in the digital space at the moment. Everything’s moving so quickly. You need to deliver your numbers and manage your current business but at the same time you need to know where things are going, what to test and what will be scaled in the future. There’s a flurry of information, new capabilities, new technology - how do you know what to go with? A lot of brands get this wrong because they focus on the technology. In fact, you need to stay focused on your consumers and their objectives. Look at the technology which is supporting that. I’ll be discussing how to stay focused on your consumers.
Coca-Cola is a brand with a heritage stretching back 128
years. What are some of the challenges in keeping the brand relevant in the digital era?
The landscape has fragmented so much over the last 20-odd years. Consumers have less time, and brands are also under much more pressure to get in front of people. This is something everyone faces. For me, competing for attention on multiple devices means understanding a couple of things. The first is knowing what your
consumers are trying to do. For us at Coca-Cola, consumers might be planning a week’s meals. In the old days that would have
involved going
through cookbooks. Now it might be looking at recipe apps or retailers’ social media sites. The question for us is how we ensure we’re present in all the spaces where people are going for that information. The second thing is making sure the
content itself is relevant. We don’t just want to pump out brand messages. We want to think about what’s in the shopper’s mind – are we talking their language? Rather than saying ‘Buy Coke ‘cos it’s great’ – which it is – we’re more likely to say ‘Are you planning for the match on Thursday night? Don’t forget your soft drinks.’ Coke is part of that. It’s a challenge for brands, but we all need to listen more.
There’s a school of thought now which says that although brands are producing more and more
content, consumers are becoming harder to reach as they filter out irrelevant or unwanted messages. Do you think that’s accurate, and if so how do brands like Coca-Cola deal with the paradox? It probably is accurate. The old tenet ‘the shopper is king’ is more true than ever. Consumers are in control. If you don’t want to receive information from a brand, you just switch it off. But I still believe that by being smart about how you talk to people – if you make your conversations relevant and contextual – you’ll get through. The brands that’ll survive in the long run are the ones that are really clear about what they stand for. I’m fortunate working for Coca- Cola because everybody gets what we stand for: people understand messages
30 issue 21 july 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
