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One of the better blogs out there when it comes to thinking about how marketing will fundamentally change as a result of the arrival of social media is Richard Stacy’s.

Richard tells it like it is:

I have a theory that no-one, not even the really big, important, famous companies like Coca Cola and P&G has any clear idea what engagement and content actually look like in the world of social media. I suspect we are all talking a big game, but basically bluffing

Talk about building trust through candor and transparency!

But, that’s not what is motivating me to write about him today.

What IS motivating me is a recent post he had called “OMG – Coca Cola Content 2020 – OMG (by the way, did I say OMG?)” that shared a phenomenally inspiring video by Coca Cola about how they view the future of marketing and brand building.

Now, as Richard points out, the video is either:

• a glimpse into the future of marketing that is so far out there that I struggled to comprehend its brilliance, or
• an example of a company so totally lost it is covering its confusion in steaming piles of marketing BS.

Or maybe a bit of both.

I happen to think it’s more of the former.

The reason why is because of Coca Cola’s avowed and publicly stated (in HBR no less) “Engagement Mindset”.

In the Harvard Business Review from back in July, “Coca-Cola Marketing Shifts from Impressions to Expressions”, Joe Tripodi who leads global marketing, customer management and commercial leadership as at Coke, wrote:

In the near term, “consumer impressions” will remain the backbone of our measurement because it is the metric universally used to compare audiences across nearly all types of media. But impressions only tell advertisers the raw size of the audience.

By definition, impressions are passive. They give us no real sense of engagement, and consumer engagement with our brands is ultimately what we’re striving to achieve. Awareness is fine, but advocacy will take your business to the next level”

The video (and based on Richard’s comment, I didn’t watch Part 2) lays out the game plan for doing this.

The keystone, cornerstone, or whichever stone you want want to call it, in Coke’s words, are “System-wide capabilities in Dynamic Storytelling.” 

Read that again.

System-wide.

Not Marketing. Not PR. Not corporate communications.

Call it “Make Everyone A Marketer” maybe, but it’s bigger than that.

As we discussed the other day, in Batman and the Story of the Social Brand (HT: David Berkowitz), it is imperative for organizations (of all sizes) to help all employees effortlessly adhere to the brand vision with enterprise-wide systems, tools, permissions, governance, guidelines, and processes.

You do this SO THAT they can tell the various and multi-faceted types of stories (as Coke outlines in their video) every single day of the year and “create new episodes and editions that fit in with the story the brand created.”

Coordinated AND dynamic storytelling as the future of marketing conversations.