No more creating values for ourselves: Coca-Cola's Wendy Clark

The third Delhi edition of the world’s #1 digital marketing event, ad:tech New Delhi 2013, kick-started in the capital today with thousands of delegates pouring in from India and all over the world to learn about the latest trends from global experts and to share their own experiences and for business networking.

The opening keynote in the morning by Wendy Clark, Senior Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities, The Coca Cola Company, deliberated on the concept of Liquid & Linked Marketing. She stressed on the need to create more stories that are share-worthy instead of typical advertisements for digital. “In this age of real-time marketing, it is imperative to think big, start small and then scale rapidly,” she recommended while addressing a packed audience. She also firmly believes that we are built for scale – if we do not reposition our failure, we will scale the wrong thing perfectly.

She says, “I am a strong believer of the fact that the content of your story plays an important role. Content could be anything from brand content to brand experiences or brand conversations. We must partner and engage with our customers to make them understand what we want to convey. Social by itself is not the silver bullet, but it definitely is the anchor.”
She also stressed on the fact that the days are gone when we had to create value for ourselves. “It is really important to create shared values that would help exceeding out of our company to our partners, community and the entire ecosystem,” she added.

Wendy also said that the value creation has moved ahead with five key value creators viz. consumers, shoppers, customers, bottlers and employees.

While concluding the session Wendy shared 7 key learnings: Be share-worthy: It is really important to create content that is interesting and compelling. There is no doubt about the fact that it is quite easy to reach out to one consumer directly but there is also no doubt that that one customer can reach out to many customers with our content. Embrace our new sales force: Our consumers are ready and willing to carry our messages ahead; they are our new sales force. Listen and then engage: if you see Coca Cola has always believed in creating listening and engagement hubs around the world which has undoubtedly provided them new measurement tools hence setting benchmarks. Think big, start small, scale fast: Test, fail, learn and then scale. If we do not reposition failure, we will scale the wrong things perfectly. So we have to learn from failures. Campaign has to be really different and engaging. Speed trumps perfection: Each time we launched a new product, we have been perfectionists to the last detail, but in today’s times, we have learnt that real-time marketing requires speed. Disrupt ourselves or be disrupted by the market: We need to be comfortable with debate and a range of perspectives and last but not the least Do not accept the status quo and Play well.

The second keynote presentation by Kathryn White, Vice President Marketing, IBM Global Business Services emphasized on the three imperatives for marketing professionals including understanding the customer as an individual, creating a system of engagement that maximizes value creation at every touch and designing your culture and brand so that they are authentically one.