eMetrics Keynote – The Coca-Cola Marketing Metrics Journey, Part Two

Ready for a keynote? Well, good, cause one’s about to start. Jim Sterne welcomes Tim Goudie from Coca Cola. This keynote is labeled “part two” because Part One was given about a year and a half ago in Washington DC at the eMetrics event down there. Tim’s here to update us on what’s been happening over the past 18 months.

Tim has been involved in brand marketing since day one. He knows about the importance of metrics and measurements. He’s going to talk about the global perspective of digital marketing.

Metrics is about knowing exactly where you are. If you’re running a business and you don’t know how you’re doing, it’s because you haven’t planned ahead of time to know where you are. The consequence of not knowing where you are results in disaster. He shows some examples of people who ended up in disaster because they didn’t know where they are or where they were going. They’re historical references and one of them involves cannibalism. It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it? I haven’t even had my coffee yet (though I did have a cupcake!).

In July 2006, Coca Cola started building a Web site called The Coke Show. They were trying to get people to upload videos and share UGC. People wanted to share, create and be recognized. The site got so heavy it could hardly move. Consumers weren’t taken to the point where Coke thought they would be. The site kind of flopped but Coke learned a lot.

He also talks about MyCokeRewards.com. It’s all about loyalty. You can register and build your profile. It was the first time Coke had used precision marketing. It collects data about your customers and then dishes out particular content that they’ve either asked for or visited on an ongoing basis. It’s powerful, but it’s expensive. The impact of the program was that it lifted all the pack sizes. The average lift was 15 points over the average consumer.

DesignTheWorldInCoke is a new site to support the upcoming Olympic Games. They unveiled it in 32 markets at the flip of a switch. They’ve been able to learn as they go.

Metrics are ridiculously political

People will fight and die over numbers. They don’t want their numbers exposed. You can overcome this by creating an even playing field. Find out the top KPIs. If you’re going to have a constant set of KPIs, stick them on the dashboard so that everyone can see them. It creates a wall of shame or fame and tugs at people’s Type A tendencies to be on top. Publish your metrics widely so that everyone has access to the data. Never ever believe that the metrics are neutral. You have to ask why you want that data and what people are going to do with it. Are you going to use it to improve things or do you just think it’s pretty?

You need to make sure the executives know that you can’t just turn off the metrics. You have to invest in the system.

What is the business that you’re in?

Tim’s organization is about selling bottles of a beverage. He doesn’t care about how many visitors come to their Web site or how many uniques the new marketing campaign will bring in. He wants to know how many cases of Coke it will help them sell. You have to make sure your metrics go back to the fundamental objective of the business. That’s how you’re going to get your buy-in. It has to go back to the bottom line and how you’re going to promote what the business is about.

You need to be where your consumers are and you need to get your organization to think about where your consumers are spending their time and how they’re consuming media.

From Web Metrics to Business Measurement

Coca-Cola created a framework that looks like this:

1. Brand Health: They have a tool that measures Brand Health all day, every day.
2. Brand Advocacy: It’s the next level of commitment. Would someone refer your product to their friend? Would they recommend your Web site? They’re monitoring that. [Tom opens up a bottle Coke. Heh]
3. Volume
4. Media Value: What’s your reach? Your frequency?
5. Marketing Productivity

Our Challenge:

[He takes a swig of his Coke. Product placement, FTW!]

You have to measure offline data with digital behavior. You want to link them together. If you know who your consumer is and how they’re spending their time, you can dish back messaging that becomes more and more relevant to them. You can’t always measure everything you want to measure.

Listening to your online customers. Not every business is the same. You want the data to build the relationship with the consumer, not just to store it.

Tracking Brand Health Online

Coca-Cola put a brand survey on their Olympics-related Web site to see how/if its helping brand health move in the right direction. They focus on brand health because there’s a built in assumption that brand health is a good indicator of future consumption.

Go External: If you don’t have the skills internally, find them externally. Find someone who can help you with tagging, optimization and interpretation and dashboards.

There’s a whole new set of digital applications that are emerging. Things like mobile marketing, widgets, social networks, etc. Imagine if you could deliver a message to a consumer at lunch time telling them that there was an offer waiting for them at the McDonalds located around the corner. That’s useful.

The problem is there’s no such thing as a mobile cookie. Have you tagged your widget correctly to map those transactions? That’s the type of information you need to know.

Find internal patrons of your will die: Find someone who believes in metrics. Find people who understand how metrics can be used and leveraged. Find an executive whose eyes light up when you talk metrics.

Distributing the data: Having the data is one thing, knowing who to get it to and in what format is another thing. You need to give your executives pretty data. It needs to be in a chart or a graph and use color. Management level people can dig a bit deeper.

Leveraging the data: The most important learning for Coke has been that it’s okay to have red dials and switches and data, but if you don’t have the people to manage it and determine who gets what data, it doesn’t matter what kind of car you’ve bought. If you don’t know how to drive it, you’ve just wasted it. You need to have the right resources on the ground. You need to map your web behavior back to your users.

Key Learnings

• We are evolving in the digital space.
• Metrics are ridiculously political.
• From metrics to business measures.
• Go external.
• We’re learning.
• Find internal patrons.
• Dashboards.
• Distributing the data.
• Leveraging the data.
• Educate yourself.

Lisa Barone is a writer, content marketer & VP of strategy at Overit Media. She's also a very active Twitterer, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.

See Lisa's author page for links to connect on social media.