Coke-logo-300x300One of my favourite quotes of all time came from Andy Warhol, writing in 1975, and goes as follows:

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

Coca-Cola, then, is a great leveller, and is one of the world’s most ubiquitous brands. Essentially, the vast majority of the planet’s seven billion people have heard of Coca Cola. That’s an incredible market reach, making it unquestionably the number one drinks brand in the world. (Rumour has it that Scotland is the only country in the world where any drink outsells Coke. The Scots really love their Irn Bru.)

So you could forgive the various marketing teams at Coca-Cola globally to sit back and relax, knowing that people will still tend to gravitate towards their brand, right? Think of the money they could save if they stopped for a while.

Wrong. Pausing would be a huge mistake, and the very best in the business know that one of the biggest enemies to any marketing campaign is loss of momentum.

Which is why it was refreshing to see the announcement this week that Coca-Cola’s UK marketing team has struck a deal to become the new sponsor of the Millennium Eye.

Does Coca-Cola need to sponsor an overpriced fairground ride? Possibly not, even if it will glow a nice red colour. Will the money that the company spends on that be traceable directly back to sales of carbonated soft drinks? I doubt it. But this is a perfect example of a company that knows it can never lose its marketing momentum, and the lesson applies to companies and budgets of all sizes.

In an industry where instant results can be difficult to come by – at BIM Creative we tend to recommend at least six months for a content-driven SEO campaign to start demonstrating results – there will always be pressure to justify spend. In many cases, maintaining that momentum is justification enough in its own right (though, of course, we would always provide glittering search results and PR coverage to underline the point).

Technical SEO work is something that requires ongoing maintenance, while content must be kept vibrant and recent. There’s nothing more off putting than clicking a website’s news page and finding the last entry came three years ago.

Very few, if any, companies will have the marketing spend of Coca Cola at their disposal, but regardless of spend, it is vital to take measures to ensure your brand is prominent and that it stays prominent. The nature of Googles approach to search now means there are no shortcuts – only the websites that are interesting to read and that are the most content-rich will perform well in search results. But we can help with cost-effective marketing campaigns that will ensure your brand isn’t lost amid the clamour.

Marketing activity – encapsulating SEO, online content, PR, social media management, email marketing, advertising, sponsorship, awards, and so on – can be done on scales to suit any budget and BIM Creative will always work with clients to ensure activity is constant and providing the best possible results from spend.

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