Coca-Cola's Digital Drive Aims For B2B and Ecommerce Growth

Coca-Cola is on “a new journey” as a company in how it intends to engage and sell to consumers using online communications that will connect with people’s desire “to be together”—be it virtually or physically. Coca-Cola's digital drive Experience will play a major part of that strategy, as outlined by Aedamar Howlett, vp of Europe, O2O (online to offline) digital transformation and Michael Willleke, integrated marketing experience director, Europe for Coca-Cola, who spoke at the Marketing Society’s Global Conference in London about the brand's history and its community engagement strategies over the years before outlining how it will continue in the future. We hear talk of ‘digital disruption', but we don't want to think of it that way.Aedamar Howlett, vp of Europe, O2O Digital Transformation Howlett spoke of the future strategy for the 21st Century, which she defined as being made up of “moonshots” to deliver the digital transformation the company craves. “We needed to change how we operated,” Howlett said of the marketing content Coca-Cola was producing. It began “stripping away” functional geographic websites and bringing together its experts from around the world to create networked teams, which would work to meet the digital opportunities ahead identified by the company. She explained this was described as “The Network Effect” internally and delivered one element of the transformation called "O2O", which Howlett is leading. O2O aims to build—enterprise-wide—the capabilities working within Coca-Cola and its partners to ensure they can “operate as fluidly as possible” between the offline and online worlds. “We hear talk of ‘digital disruption', but we don't want to think of it that way. We'd like to think of it very opportunistically, this is an opportunity for us to grow our business, to continue winning and to create new revenue streams,” she continued. Coca-Cola, which Howlett described as “a marketing organization at heart,” intends for its communications output to also work between online and offline “more fluidly,”—doubtless a task that newly appointed marketing lead WPP will be tasked with ensuring, following its win of the nearly year-long media and marketing review. In Coca-Cola's Global Holiday Ad, a Young Boy's Idea Becomes a Community Obsession It aims to leverage technology to develop “more meaningful” direct one-to-one relationships with consumers and convert transactions through online experiences and communications. A place for experimentation Willeke outlined that this new direction is still seen as “a learning” and “experimentation” opportunity allowing the company to make mistakes but to learn for the future to grow the business further. One experience that was initiated as an experimentation a year ago within the company was in its attempt to create an online marketplace to sell to consumers directl,y which has led to the launch out of Europe of yourcocacola.co.uk To be successful … our culture is going to be as important as the data to achieve success.Aedamar Howlett, vp of Europe, O2O, Coca-Cola “All your favorites. Quick as a click,” the website promises. Trialled in the U.K. in 2020 when lockdown meant ecommerce and online delivery became a lifeline, the site offers all of Coca-Cola's brands directly to consumers, including a feature that allows them to personalize the design of the cans they purchase to enable gifting too. Howlett admitted that the process had “not gone smoothly” and that it had evolved since its initial launch, as those involved learned from mistakes made. However, Coca-Cola is now ready for the next version to go live as the marketplace and the online to offline evolves, an area the business intends to strengthen around its existing retail customers and partners. Another experiment described as “eB-to-B,” where the company aims to respond to customers and their “category needs” in one place, began in LATAM a couple of years ago and is called “Wabi”—an ecommerce app that is now live across 14 countries. Howlett added that the European business was working across a forecasted population of 500 million consumers by 2025, and it intends to be ready to “address the needs of those consumers” through the transformation journey Coca-Cola has embarked upon. “To be successful … our culture is going to be as important as the data to achieve success—how we connect to co-creation, how we dare to experiment, how we smile to energize and how we always engage with positive intent,” Howlett concluded. Coca-Cola Names WPP as Global Marketing Network Partner

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Inside Coca-Cola's Digital Experimentation to Drive B-to-B and Ecommerce Growth

The global beverages producer is experimenting with new digital platforms to bridge online and offline experiences

Coca-Cola’s digital drive

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Coca-Cola’s digital drive

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Stephen Lepitak