Coca-Cola has been an Olympic Partner since 1928 - the
longest continuous sponsor of the games. Leading into the games in Great
Britain, music became a central theme for Coca-Cola as a way to engage young
people. Joe Beliotti, the company's head of music, called on Mark Ronson
to lead the charge. Ronson recorded sounds of athlete's from different
Olympic sports (table tennis, archery, taekwondo and others) and used the
sounds, with lyrics and vocals by Katy B, to create the Coca-Cola song, Anywhere in the World. The song
is part of the Move to the Beat ™,
global teen focused Coca-Cola campaign that celebrates the beat of
London 2012.
A two minute "Move to the Beat" video debuted in
February followed by the release of both a 4 minute and a one minute version of
the feature (shown above). To date, these three clips have been viewed
almost three million times - not to mention the massive media on TV and online
these past few weeks during the Olympics. As an extension of
"Anywhere in the World," Coca-Cola developed an online application
within the campaign giving fans the opportunity to create and share their own
beat using the music and the sounds of the games…anywhere in the world.
But based on my experience with the online application to
"Create My Beat," I think they missed the mark. There are two
options presented when you go to the website. You can either create
without giving Coca-Cola access to FaceBook or you can sign in with
FaceBook. Coca-Cola would prefer you choose the latter so that they can
access pictures, your timeline, friends, etc. and with the hope that it will also
be shared. But the real miss here is that the only thing you really do is
allow access. If access to FaceBook is granted, coca-Cola takes information
and pictures from your profile and slots them into predetermined spots within
their video. They do give you the option of choosing from nine different
sports themes and seven different musical genres to make the video, but outside
of those two decisions, no other participation of creativity I needed.
And if you don't want to allow access to FaceBook, the experience is extremely
generic to the point of feeling like you wasted your time.
I have been a part of many campaigns where user-generated
content was encouraged - across all screens and on site as well as online.
What I have experienced through these campaigns is that fans like to create something
that they can call their own - and share it with friends. That is not the
case here. The application does all of the work and your participation is
limited at best. A much cooler and more integrated experience would (1.)
allow you to choose from the background music provided, (2.) make Mark Ronson's
recorded Olympic sounds available for samples and to (3.) allow the you to choose
from slides or short video segments - provided by Coca-Cola as well as taken
from the user's FaceBook profile. This would allow you to "own"
the creative process within the guidelines of the Coca-Cola application. Maybe,
courtesy of Coca-Cola, a link to your custom mix could be emailed once
completed so it can be streamed or shared with your entire FaceBook
community. This experience creates more excitement and could potentially
lead you to create and share multiple versions of the mix. Coca-Cola
chose the simple and easy way to "create and share" but doesn't allow
the user to get emotionally involved or really even care about what they are
doing or sending.
Even though I did not enjoy the creative experience, I did
like the fact that on the "Create My Beat" home page, Coca-Cola shows
how many people have shared their "beat." It has a menu that
allows you to search by "Everyone, By Me and My FB Friends, Athletes and
Celebrities," and a drop down menu to search by "Nation." According
to the website, and to a report from IEG (a leading sponsorship consulting
agency), over 3.2 million users have shared their "beat." So I
decided to see how the United States would fare if there was a medal for most
"beats" shared. I clicked on the drop down menu and selected
the United States, but something didn't make sense. The counter
said that in the United States, only 2284 people had shared their beat. So
I tried the United Kingdom. Hmmm. 1059 from the United Kingdom.
How could there be 3.2 million beats shared when less than 3500 came from
the U.S. and the U.K. combined? Coca-Cola supports a lot of athletes, so
I clicked on that button to see how many athletes around the world participated
in this campaign. Four?! Mark Ronson went around the world meeting
and talking with athletes - specifically working with 5 athletes to record the
sounds for the song - and they have a total of four that have shared their own
version? Then I realized that I was getting sidetracked. I wanted
to find who actually shared these 3.2 million beats. Going down the menu
of counties, I clicked and saw some mind boggling results. Sweden -
57. Italy - 989. Russia - 805. Japan - 343. China - 3,212,507.
What!? So of the 3,237,026 "beats" that had been shared, 99.2%
of them came from China?? They
must LOVE creating their own beats.
Not only was I disappointed with the entire creative experience
but now I was wondering if any of this sharing data was even true. So I
waited 24 hours to see how many more people might create and share their beats.
Globally the numbers went up less than 750. Shares in the U.S. went up 43
and still only 4 athletes and celebrities participated in the process.
And China? There was no change.
On August 5th, IEG sent out a tweet titled "Expressions
Top Impressions" with a link to the Coca-Cola "Create Your Beat"
website touting the over 3.2 million shares. I assume they didn't realize
at the time that over 99% of the created beats were from China. IEG then
sent out a slide that tracked the Social Media Performance of the Olympic
sponsors. Coca-Cola was #1 in Top Performers and Highest Status while
taking 9th in Greatest Potential. I assume they are counting the
"Create Your Beat" online application in their numbers. But if they are - that would seem to be
inaccurate. I don't have statistics on
Twitter mentions, FB mentions, Pinterest, Tumblr and others, but I assume the
almost 3 million YouTube views are a part of the overall equation. Maybe
all of the YouTube plays are from China too?
Coca-Cola is the #1 soft drink around the world…and for good
reason. They are no doubt a tremendous sponsor and supporter of the
Olympics. They are creative, philanthropic and have gone to great lengths
to be very environmental during the Olympic games. But this "creating
and sharing" music initiative was a total miss and I now find it hard to
believe any of the statistics attached to them or the games.
