Excellent Marketing Campaign via Social Media #DietCokeBday

Diet Coke turns 30 this year, and everybody is talking about it!

On July 29^th the brand launched an excellent marketing campaign, using a FREE marketing tool, twitter, to get its loyal customers fighting for a chance to win free Diet Coke for a year.

A competition via @DietCokeUS asked consumers and fans to tweet the love through birthday wishes, haikus, finishing sentences, etc. and hashtag it #DietCokeBday. The winners received a year’s supply of Diet Coke and a surprise 30 second party with the DC Crew.

With over 200,000 followers, you can imagine the number of free promotional tweets pushing brand image and awareness.  Not to mention the significant increase in customer loyalty. Just hearing about the campaign (and not being a part of it) makes me want to go out and buy the diet soda, because who doesn’t want to be apart of something so huge, so unique, and so full of energy?

Watch any of the videos Diet Coke posted of the 30 second parties, and you’ll understand.

According to the Diet Coke brand page, it’s been the top diet soft drink in the world since 1984, after only two years of being on the market. Today it maintains that position as well as the no. 3 spot for soft drinks in the world.

You don’t get stats like that with a mediocre marketing strategy. No, you get it by thinking outside the bottle.

The Grocer’s recently published “Top 100 Advertisers Report” showed that Coca-Cola has cut ad spending by 6.6% in 2010 and invested more into social media.

“Coca-Cola’s social media strategy is clearly about long-term sustainable engagement, developing advocacy and encouraging brand loyalty,” says Matt Rhodes of socialmediatoday.com.  

“Social media is not just about campaigns or generating buzz around a new product launch. It can be used to engage with consumers on an ongoing basis in order to deepen relationships with a brand.” 

Clearly the Coca-Cola company is taking its social media marketing very serious. The company published its Online Social Media Principles, stating, “These Online Social Media Principles have been developed to help empower our associates to participate in this new frontier of marketing and communications, represent our Company, and share the optimistic and positive spirits of our brands.”

It then goes on to list the five core values of the company in the online social media community, which are

1. 1) Transparency
2. 2) Protection
3. 3) Respect
4. 4) Responsibility
5. 5) Utilization

So if you want to follow somebody, (pun intended), you might want to follow the successful marketing strategies of @DietCokeUS.