shortformblog:

joshsternberg:

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.”

Click through to read the rest.

How you do social media when your main product isn’t content: Build lots of content anyway.

Did they create this for Coke drinkers or for her marketers as some kind of experminatal showcase?

• Be likeable
• Identify the influencers
• Be selective involving the media
• Give good quotes——and write moving letters (I really want to do this but the last time I wrote a friend a letter a few weeks ago, he asked me if I was dying.)
• Be political, when applicable

They forgot to include lots of (imaginary) swag….but yes.

(Photo from The Swampland’s “Political Pictures of the Week”)

When the communications director has the “I’m gonna tear off my own nose” look on his face and the press secretary looks like he’s holding back tears, nothing good is happening.