Consumers write the script of The Coca-Cola Company's new ad for Fanta in Mexico

Usually new branding campaigns tend to be calculated coporate messages, striving to establish a new image, in a way to renew a product, appealing to consumer's emotional values or perceptions about the brand. Trying to reshape them, to lead them to think that something is new about the product, that there's something they didn't know about it and have to experience it again.

Few are the opportunities in which consumers are active part of that process, less are the opportunities in which consumers define or accomodate the brand message to what they feel the brand is.

What better way to target a message than letting consumers created it for themselves?
What better way to create a sense of belonging among consumers than starting with them as the center from the begining?

That was the approach that the people at Coca-Cola Mexico (the country with the second largest per capita consumption of soft drinks in the world) took to launch the new Fanta branding campaign Bamboocha(the site is in Spanish). At e-volution we were part of this innovative project, leading the development of the online components of the campaign.

The concept of the campaign was that the agency had no script writer for the tv ad and that Coca Cola invited consumers to write it for them. Consumers did not only had to write the script. They had to do it in teams of three people.

Viral Marketing. For each contact oportunity, the advertiser enjoyed now of an added a multiplier to the media budget. For every single person willing to participate, there was the opportunity of getting the permission of interact with two of their peers. That significantly improved the Cost per Contact or Acquisition Cost of the campaign. Moreover... besides having consumers writing the script.. they would also have the chance to select the winner.

Viral Marketing again. Voting has prooved to be one of the most effective viral marketing enablers in on line marketing. Teams posting their script online invited as many friends they have to increase their chances to win. Now consumers, by promoting their posts, were promoting Fanta's new branding campaign. Word of mouth. People often ten to refer to the site other consumers with similar demographics. It's their social network they are leveraging on. And if the advertiser is lucky enough... they would have some "hubs" among the people participating in the campaign, one of those individuals that is known and is related to more people than the average guy.

The results were outstanding. Companies looking to take advantage of the new media, need to be open to follow new paths, to create new dynamics to engage consumers, leaving behind the very structured and safe approaches that helped them reach the leading position in which they might be today.

"Consumers are connected now" is one of the most senseless phrases said since the masive adoption of the internte. They've always been connected. Social Networks, is not something new that the interactive media brought to the table. What's new is that now it's easier for brands to understand those social networks, even mapping them, storing them on a database. Companies that are able to identify the hubs on their consumer's social networks, and leverage on them, are able to spread their message, in a more trustful and efficient way: word of mouth. These are the influentiers, these are those potential ambassadors of a brand that can build that emotional connection and strengthen consumers' perception of a particular product or service.