Last week, Coca-Cola took an intriguing approach to the growing trend of “brands as publishers.”
Calling it Coca-Cola Journey, Coke married the staid, static philosophy of a corporate website with the dynamic, fluidity of a blog. While the Atlanta-based soft drink company has its footprints all over the digital world — it has a robust presence on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn — it also wanted to build its own online home, a welcoming place for its fans.
While it may be a great PR move, there’s also value for its 1.2 million monthly unique visitors. There’s a wide range of content topics — entertainment, brands, business, community, environment, health, history, innovation, sports — that Coke employees write about and curate from around the Web. The stories themselves either discuss the company or issues that the company cares about.
Coke is now firmly entrenched in the storytelling business, minus the whole ad selling aspect. And keep in mind that these are Coke-focused stories, and not journalism, which, some say, is exactly the point. One agency executive, who requested anonymity because his agency represents a competitor, told me that “this is content that is meant to be discoverable and shareable, optimized around topics that Coke feels shows their brand in the best light.”
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How you do social media when your main product isn’t content: Build lots of content anyway.
Digital food for thought: Reddit, co-founded by Alexis Ohanian (above) and purchased by Advance Publications in 2006, is doing boffo these days, becoming one of the most influential sites on the internet and even scoring President Obama for an “Ask Me Anything” event last week. What’s their secret? Well, Advance just let the company do its thing, taking a hands-off approach and letting it grow without heavy corporate influence. Advance is not doing this with all of its properties — its newspaper publications, for example, have been targeted for cutbacks in recent months, most notably the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Our thinking-aloud question here: What if Advance Publications somehow could figure out a way to treat its newspapers more like Reddit — to give them the freedom to do what they do without heavy corporate influence? That’s what this David Carr article got us thinking about. (photo by Ross Mantle/The New York Times)
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed an antitrust suit against Apple, along with fellow publishers Holtzbrinck Publishers (MacMillan) and The Penguin Publishing Co. Ltd. (Penguin Group), accusing the companies of conspiring to raise the prices of ebooks. The lawsuits follow months of negotiations between the publishers, the DoJ, and state governments in an attempt to agree on a settlement. Apple has not publicly responded to the suit; however, MacMillan CEO John Sargent sent a letter to publishers and agent explaining that the company did not settle because it is “hard to settle a lawsuit when you know you have done no wrong.” (photo by Phil Photostream) source
» Remember former Goldman Sachs VP Greg Smith? You know, the one who published his resignation letter in the New York Times? Well now he’s writing a book that will cover his 12 years with the company, and at least one expert on the bank expects serious blowback. William Cohan, author of Money & Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World, explained that while the idea of the bank putting its own interests before its customers was not a new one, “what is new is that it’s an employee saying it.”
The moment has arrived. Here’s how this works: Starting right now, you have 24 hours to produce and submit your work. We’ll take the next 24 to select, edit, design and lay everything out. The end result will be a beautiful glossy paper magazine. And a super sharp digital…
Should we submit a Tumbl-zine to these guys? :D
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