Coke cuts websites to focus on contact via social networks

Coca-Cola is slashing its number of websites to two online hubs and will instead be focusing its brand activity on social networks.

The drinks giant is to radically reduce its roster of individual brand and campaign sites by August 2010 and instead make coca-cola.co.uk into an information hub.

The site will house a variety of content about the company, divided into sections such as brands, health, environment and community. There will also be sections dedicated to the drinks company¹s associations with events such as the World Cup and the 2012 Olympic Games.
Social media activity will link to loyalty content site Coke Zone.

Lucy Keown, head of corporate communications at Coca-Cola UK, said, ³Having a website is important but so are the conversations you have where people really want to be. For us, what¹s important is making the content that people want, but also knowing they don¹t always want to come directly to your website.²

Coca-Cola said a focus for the site would be natural search and creating content that people will want to share, having found that most customers would visit the Coca-Cola sites after being on a search engine.

Coca-cola.co.uk, created by digital agency Zone, is in beta, with the full site due for launch this autumn. The company is calling for customer feedback on the site.

To visit the NMA website click here

Recommended

Brand-conscious and young: your new market

Mark Choueke

If proof were required that children are incredibly aware of how brands affect their lives, then here it is: “If I had £1,000, I’d spend it on a 42-inch Panasonic TV because Panasonic is best for Wii.” That quote came from a six-year-old when Marketing Week commissioned Discovery to carry out research for this special ’marketing to children’ issue of the magazine.