Twitter showdown: Coke vs Pepsi
Today, we're launching a new weekly Twitter showdown of some of the biggest companies on the web, in your grocery store or on your brain. Today's competitors are some of the most well known brands on the planet.
Yep. It's Coca-Cola verses Pepsi. When have we heard that before? But this time, we're not having a blind taste test. With the help of Visual.ly's new easy to create infographics, we could easily compare these two drink giants.
First, a little background on what our competitors are doing.
Coming soon: .google?
Thanks to an ICANN decision, new gTLDs are coming.
According to a recent Afilias study, a sizable minority of brands may apply for their own gTLDs, ushering in a new era in which consumers are asked to visit websites ending in .brand, and not .com.
Is Apple on the brink of iAd defeat?
When Apple launched its iAd mobile advertising offering, there was reason to be excited. After all, Steve Jobs was promising something revolutionary, and betting against him was not for the faint of heart.
Unsurprisingly, major brands lined up to try out iAds. Yes, the minimums were high, and Apple exerted far more control over the creative process than was typical, but if the ads were as cool as its devices, all would work out. Or so the thinking went.
At the World Cup, official sponsors are losing the brand wars
Is the age of expensive brand sponsorship coming to an end? The World Cup starts today and the brands getting the most brandlift from the events are not the ones who signed expensive sponsorship contracts.
It's Pepsi and Nike who have achieved the most World Cup buzz so far. But Adidas and Coke are the ones forking over for sponsorships. In today's world of the digital brand ambush, it's getting harder to make the case for official sponsorships.
Stickybits opens for businesses with "official bits"
As consumer product brands explore digital, connecting real life products to interactive elements online has become increasingly important. One startup in contention to do just that is Stickybits.
Stickybits lets people connect barcodes with any piece of digital information they can create. When the company launched at SXSW in February, the technology was in place, but the full potential of the product was not yet a reality. Today at CM Summit in New York, Stickybits announced the brand partnerships that can actually make it a successful and useful business.
Pepsi's new brand challenge: Think small
According to Frank Cooper, Pepsi's SVP and chief consumer engagement officer, his company no longer wants to act like a big brand. The self-described "voice of a generation" isn't looking for its next celebrity spokesperson or major TV placement.
At TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, Cooper explained:
"Now the big brand story is: don't act like a big brand."
That directive could be harder than it looks.
Foursquare's challenge: keeping up
Foursquare is on a roll. It's got heathly user adoption and very desirable demos, a growing roster of major brands who want to team up for promotions, and plenty of love from the media (not to mention endless speculation about potential suitors?
Now, the white-hot location-based social service is facing problems very much in keeping with the ones Twitter faced at this stage in its development: scale. A word that rhymes with both "fail" and "whale", perhaps the most infamous error page in recent internet memory, and an emblem of how difficult it can be for small start-ups to keep up with rapid growth.
Geomarketing: Ten Foursquare marketing campaigns
Geolocation-based social network Foursquare just might be the internet's 'next big thing'. While it isn't anywhere close to the size of Twitter or Facebook, the young company last month passed the million user mark.
That's a memorable milestone for any consumer internet startup, but the company's progress is perhaps better measured by the number of marketing deals it has inked with bigger companies. Here are 10 of those deals.
The demise of the brand relationship
Brands are working harder than ever to decide what course to take to engage with their audiences' world and sell more. Many say brands need to evolve, but more signs are showing that a complete rebirth is a better bet.
Pepsi Refresh: Will the social media halo extend to soda sales?
PepsiCo. is putting social media to the test with its new charity initiative Refresh Everything. The soft-drink giant has notably refrained from SuperBowl ads this year, choosing instead to spread the word for its new campaign through digital and social means.
But will those efforts work when rival brands continue big TV buys and have the same ability to add digital aspects to their campaigns?
