Coke crushes Pepsi in most social media metrics

Two years ago, Coke abandoned efforts to build its own social infrastructure “in favor of approaching customers at the places they already hang out, like Facebook and YouTube.” Meanwhile, Pepsi was reallocating cash from Super Bowl spots to its philanthropical crowd-sourcing campaign, The Refresh Project.

Today, Pepsi has caught up on Twitter, but is getting hammered by Coke in other social metrics:

Does the data reflect the general public’s apathy about doing good things for strangers? The feel-good vibe seemed to work for Coke’s Happiness Machine. That campaign, primarily YouTube-based, featured a Coke Machine dispensing a variety of goodies, and probably cost a fraction of what Pepsi spent on The Refresh Project. Giving flowers to a cubicle denizen is clearly not more morally worthwhile than giving grants to non-profits and community organizers, but according to the bottom lines, socially and economically, Coke’s stripped-down approach to social marketing is working.

Coke has been losing market share to the Dr. Pepper Snapple group over the last three years, but so has Pepsi, and at a greater rate.

So is the trick to bubbling social success focusing on existing social networks, rather than pioneering your own? Pepsi now looks to be trying Coke’s formula. Last week, PepsiCo downsized its agency roster, dropping 65% of the shops that had been working on its complex and busy marketing strategy. Interestingly, one of the smaller shops being let go is Brooklyn’s Huge, which had worked with Pepsi on the Refresh Project.

photo via flickr user tudor