January 28, 2006
“Coke lies, misleads with fake ‘zero’ blog. Has coke overstepped the mark with its invasion of the online community?” That’s the title of an article on the Marketing Blog about Coke Zero. For this new drink Coke had launched a new website with blog called ‘The Zero Movement‘. This website did fit in complete guerilla campaign, complete with tagging in the streets etc. Now apparently some people in the blogging community – according to the Marketing Blog – saw this move as intrusive, as unreal, as fake and thus they reacted against it. How? By altering Coke advertising on the streets, but more important by creating an anti-Coke Zero website with thezeromovement.org. Now as I read the article it seems like the creation of Coke’s ‘fake’ blog was the reason to start all this, which I don’t agree. Check out the Coke website and you’ll see it’s not like Coke is hiding it’s brand from it, so it’s not like they’re pretending to be something else than what they are. Is that fake? Is that intrusive? I don’t think so. If that would be the case, Google’s Adwords are as fake compared to the ‘genuine’ webresults and should be punished too… if that ain’t a stupid idea!
Was it a good idea from Coke to create this blog with the Zero launch? Maybe yes, maybe no. I feel like it fitted within the idea of the whole guerilla campaign. Did it work out ok for them, it sure didn’t if you see what they did to the advertising, but the stupidest thing they’ve probably done is that they forgot to buy some domains especially those that counterparted their dot com. But I guess that won’t happen anymore after this. And as far as creating a blog for branding reasons, that’s just fine with me, as long as they never pretend for it to be fansites or whatever, which they clearly didn’t. And yes, Coke, like many other big enterprises will always have their lovers and their haters, and especially the last group is more responsible for this anti-Zero move, than a so-called fake blog would have been if you ask me.
Hey there, CTB!
In your post you write, “Check out the Coke website and you’ll see it’s not like Coke is hiding its brand from it.” Well…
Coke didn’t have their logo anywhere on the site for weeks, so you may need to do a little more reading on this topic. There is a post at timlonghurst.com that gives a little more background info. Significantly, Coke’s decision to use SPAM as a marketing technique is a key reason for the vast criticism this campaign has received.
Thanks for linking to thezeromovement.org and congratulations on a nice blog.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for your comment. While writing my comment I had been wondering whether the official Coke site would have been altered during the campaign. I couldn’t really find proof of that so I didn’t mention it. Looking at your blog it seems that you’re indeed right and that Coke has been more fake than I had expected, a tactic I don’t agree with as I wrote in my post. Still I remain convinced that companies like Coke are easily countered on what they do, proven by the existiing ‘anti’ websites/blogs that exist and that are not linked to the Zero Movement.
Thanks for the nice comment on my blog by the way ;-)