Media Bistro's PR Newser has an article on Coke's announcement that social media buzz doesn't produce short term sales vs. print ads, which also happen to trump broadcast.
WHAT??? That's a pretty crazy statement, especially since they have more than 61 million Facebook Fans and probably know a thing or two about social media. In the story, Eric Schmidt, senior manager-marketing strategy and insights at Coca-Cola, also goes on to say that they're not giving up on social. Far from it. he makes a point to say that this is one study for a particular brand and product category.
Our inflammatory blog headline aside, the reason we're posting this is two-fold. If you read the Media Bistro and AdAge articles about the announcement, you should pick up on two things:
1. Measurement is difficult and time consuming. We're often asked if we can provide results in terms of influence on sales for clients because of our efforts and unfortunately, we cannot. Most of our clients simply don't have the resources in place to track how PR, social media, traditional advertising, word-of-mouth, etc. affect sales. It takes a lot of effort and resources.
2. What works, or doesn't work, for one brand may not matter to your brand. From Pinterest to skywriting, there are more options than ever before for engaging consumers with your message. Before you decide you need to be on one format or another, take a look at your resources and customer, then choose wisely.
You can read the full article on Media Bistro here and AdAge here.