Front Runner Films
Front Runner Films - Team
We hope you enjoy reading this blog post.If you’re interested in taking your business to the next-level with video and want to work with our award-winning team click here.

Coca Cola’s Branded Content Success Story

Sep 4, 2019

It’s always a success story of an underdog that makes you relish in the beauty of innovation and hard work. Coca Cola, in this case, was the underdog. That may be hard to believe considering it is a world famous soda brand that provides people with their coveted dark carbonated drinks.

Over the last decade, however, the U.S. has turned their back on sugary soft drinks leaving the industry’s sales in a “soda slump.” This decline forced Coca Cola to reinvent the culture of their company and in doing so they started with revamping their social media platforms to tell a story.

“The use of the word “story” is significant because the Web site changes are indicative of the growing interest among marketers in recasting their communications with consumers as storytelling rather than advertising. ’”

–Stuart Elliott, The New York Times

Instead of maintaining a corporate approach to their website, Coca Cola transitioned their site to look more like a media-website. With this look, they also began publishing content that consumers would want to consume–the purpose of branded content.

The goal of this was to converge the corporate website with a publishing platform. Coca Cola wanted to offer a plethora of point of views on topics ranging from entertainment, health, sports to interviews and opinion columns in order to foster conversation and to establish a brand voice.

In doing so, Coca Cola employed freelance writers and photographers coupled with marketing and public relations teams which collectively have the ability to generate over 15 million Coke stories in the social graph. The company’s approach to social media changed from broadcasting their products to instead focusing on content that is engaging and inspiring.

Coca Cola also took a holistic approach by not only creating their own content to be published on their site, but they also linked content from other sites as another way to promote who they are within the community. It is simply a site used as a “hub” for more information. The idea was channel coca-cola’s story and to make publishing a part of their identity.

Since there are teams of people generating content for the site, they are able to connect with a larger audience and help drive engagement with their brand.

The company’s look is completely new and resembles a glossy magazine with topics and stories that are appealing. For example, on the front page today, Coca Cola featured a story about sustainability in the North Atlantic Gyre to their involvement in helping Denver launch a Recycling Education Campaign. These stories highlight Coke’s focus on community which causes viewers to have a higher regard for the company.

This approach was risky to say the least, yet it has attracted over 1.1 million visitors to the site each month.

Get to Know Front Runner Films

Front Runner Films is a corporate video production company telling humorous and heartfelt stories helping bring products, companies and passion to light.

Recent Blog Posts

Top 6 Most Common Video Mistakes to Avoid

Top 6 Most Common Video Mistakes to Avoid

A corporate video is a representation of your business, therefore any major slip up will make the brand look amateurish, incompetent, or both. This will send customers running the opposite way: right into the arms of your competitor. So how can you be sure to produce...

Capture Your Summer

Capture Your Summer

It’s summertime, which means making memories… beach days, popsicles, and the occasional al fresco nap. Back in the day, all these snapshots of summer would be captured in a photo album once the kids were back at school in September, but things have changed. Sure, it’s...

FRF x ChatGPT

FRF x ChatGPT

At Front Runner Films, we’re all about technology. From the latest advances in editing software to the newest cameras, we’re always on the hunt for tools that will help us do a better job on every shoot, for every client. So when ChatGPT arrived on the scene, we were...

So How Long Is Your Attention Span Anyway?

So How Long Is Your Attention Span Anyway?

There was an infographic a few years back that went viral—and sparked a million think pieces. The claim was this: you now have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. Shocking, maybe, but it also made sense. After all, in a world where we can be working at our...