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SHELLY PALMER: I like the way the people at Coca-Cola think
about social media a lot.
Mike Donnelly at Coke, I think, has done a particularly
good job trying interesting stuff digitally.
Some of which has worked great, and some
of it, not so much.
But I like what Coke is doing, and I like their
experimentation.
And I like the way they think about the
social space very much.
If you look at Coke's work, specifically the stuff they've
done in digital, what they've done in Facebook and how
they've sort of discovered the pitfalls of Facebook marketing
and social media marketing.
What is a soft drink?
They have such a hard thing to do in a social media space,
because you don't really wax poetic about Coke.
And they've also done a brilliant job, I think,
dealing with the high fructose corn syrup issue.
I think they've done some really interesting work.
The most effective thing I've seen, and I don't have any
data to back it up, is Audi.
What Audi's done to BMW and what they've done to Mercedes.
Their idea that they were a differentiated vehicle, for
someone who wasn't one of the three buyers
of the three cars.
You're going to go one of these three cars, going to buy
one of these three cars, go to one of these three schools,
and this car's for you.
Wow.
They absolutely understand who and what they were.
They priced the car right.
They priced it to move.
They understood how to conquest BMW.
They named their program BMW Conquest. They were giving
back months of lease payments.
They went at Beamer with everything they had.
They used every marketing tool available,
and I was very impressed.
It's a luxury car.
You don't need to buy a car that's that expensive.
And by the way, people who buy cars that are that expensive
generally are buying them for a reason that has nothing to
do with the cost of the car.
So you can't usually compete on price.
They did an unbelievable job.
And by the way, BMW brought out the 535xi, the new one, at
the same time, and they're selling them like hotcakes.
But Audi somehow--
with all that going on, with BMW redesigning the car, still
was able to make such an amazing marketing impression
on people, and their sales have proven it.