Coke, Pepsi like ’Net gains

Coca-Cola Co. and arch-rival PepsiCo are guardians of some of the world’s most recognizable brands. Coca-Cola’s archives have the proof, in shelves of leather-bound volumes of trademark cases.

But in the freewheeling world of online “social media marketing,” the companies say they are handing over control of their brands to fans.

PepsiCo is touting its Pepsi Refresh Project as a large boost for its signature brand. The yearlong program encourages fans to submit ideas and vote online as to how Pepsi should distribute $20 million to charities, causes and businesses of their choosing. PepsiCo says it has some rules and guidelines, but only about where the money can go.

“This is not about us pouring our messaging down,” said Bonin Bough, PepsiCo’s global director of digital and social media. “It’s about releasing control. The center of culture has evolved to the point where people own brands.”

PepsiCo is tracing its progress, and touts the big numbers. RefreshEverything.com has generated more than a million unique visitors since the January launch. To date, ideas posted on the Refresh Project have received almost 3 million votes.

Pepsi has doubled its number of Facebook friends to more than 611,000 since the project went live two days before Christmas. The project generates nearly 1,000 “tweets” daily on the micro-blogging site Twitter.com.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola’s Facebook page has added about 1.5 million fans this year, growing from 3.5 million in January to 5.18 million now. That makes it one of Facebook’s top fan pages. Less than two years after Facebook required a reluctant Coca-Cola to take ownership of the site from two fans who built it, the social networking site has become a fulcrum of Coca-Cola’s online marketing efforts.

Coca-Cola used its Facebook page to guide its charitable giving while building pre-game buzz about this year’s Super Bowl commercials. It promised to give $1 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America — and a glimpse at the company’s ads — every time a Facebook user gave a friend a “virtual Coke.” The offer found 126,000 takers.

Coca-Cola is also sending a team of three young people around the world to 206 countries and territories: everywhere Coca-Cola is sold. The “Expedition 206” team, which was chosen by online voting in more than 150 countries, is tracing its progress on Facebook and hoping for new cadres of fans to pop up in each country it visits.

In China, the word’s most populous country, the program allows online fans to follow the journey and trade “Expedition 206 stamps.” So far, more than 46 million active users have traded more than 100 million digital stamps.

Coca-Cola says it tries to harness material from fans, rather than flood the Web with its own content. About 70 percent of the material on the brand’s main Facebook page is from fans, with 30 percent from the company, such as questions about where fans enjoyed their last Coca-Cola.

Meanwhile, Sprite is getting its first global marketing campaign. Coca-Cola’s second-largest brand aims to appeal to teens with online tools that allow fans to remix and mash-up songs, as well as create their own 45-second animated movies.

The new campaign, which Coke dubs “The Spark” in honor of Sprite’s new logo, rolls out this year in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America.

Coca-Cola executives say the number of its online fans is evidence that the company doesn’t push its brand too aggressively or mess with the Web’s ethos of individuality.

“When you’ve got brand managers, everybody wants to own the brand,” said Carol Kruse, Coca-Cola’s vice president of global interactive marketing. “But we don’t own the brand. Consumers do.”

Coca-Cola says it takes down less than 1 percent of the postings on its Facebook page, usually for content that is pornographic, racist or sexist. Kruse said even Pepsi material can stay on the page, in the interest of authenticity.

“We may not be too happy about it,” Kruse said. “But we let it go.”

Like electoral campaigns, both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are trying to use their Internet presence to make people feel warm and fuzzy about their respective brands. The technology has changed, but the aim is similar to the decades-old practice of giving out T-shirts: to build relationships and enlist people as ambassadors of the brand.

Coca-Cola says its online presence augments the effects of its sponsorship and commercials. When the company launched the “digital Coke” on its Facebook page before the Super Bowl, the company gained 800,000 new “friends” in about 10 days.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo is pushing its “DEWmocracy 2” campaign for Mountain Dew. The online program allows fans to design the next Mountain Dew product from flavor to package design to advertising campaign. That kind of power is typically reserved for brand managers and advertising agencies. PepsiCo said it is shifting control of product development to its most passionate brand loyalists, crafting a campaign that elevates a “do it yourself” attitude.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi, rivals in store aisles and online, are trying to link their online beneficence to their real-world soda-selling, reasoning that conversing with fans increases their intent to purchase drinks.

“There is no doubt about that,” said Dan Howard, a marketing professor at Southern Methodist University. “Social media marketing is where it’s at.”