Kruse Control: Coke's Mobile Ambitions Outlined By Its Interactive Chief

Advertising Age features a Q&A with Carol Kruse, global interactive chief of Coke, where she gives a rundown of its plans in mobile marketing and mobile content: these include using your phone to interact with vending machines, and piggy-backing on the takeup of mobile entertainment services to drive more brand awareness of Coke’s many beverage holdings. It’s worth reading because Coke is so damn big, and has most certainly set the pace for how other megabrands use new media like mobile to get their message across. But disappointingly Kruse doesn’t give anything away in terms of how much Coke is investing in these projects, or how well they are being used in any market.

While Coke operates regional franchises for the production, distribution and marketing of its beverages, its centralized team leverages local initiatives into other markets. In mobile, this is a big juggling act, given the different stages of each region in take-up for mobile services. There’s a hint that some regions are still definitely behind others. Kruse: “We have great examples of mobile marketing in Asia and Europe and we want to make sure that the U.S. or Latin America are benefiting from the experience in other regions.”

Coke has taken a lesson from the over-exposure of other big brands like Microsoft and McDonalds, and perhaps also reports that have come out questioning how effective mobile advertising actually is. This means that Coke walks a fine line between pushing its brand and riding on the rising popularity of mobile content services, particularly among the younger generation. Kruse on Coke’s mobile social network Sprite Yard: “The genesis of the Sprite Yard is an understanding of where our consumers are spending their time. We’re understanding that a mobile device is extremely important to a teen or young adult and can be an effective way to market to consumers but on their terms. We need to be careful we wrap our brand around an experience the consumer is already doing. Youth are already using mobile phones to communicate to each other, to build community, to text, to send photos. We’re just trying to enhance that and bring the Sprite brand into it.”

Sprite Yard was launched in the U.S. and in China and Kruse says it will be rolled out in at least eight more countries in the next 15 month.

Comments have been disabled for this post