much of its $ 2 billion annual marketing budget on branded content, its YouTube channel( rank # 184, 4.9 million subscribers) is lapped by dozens of crowdculture start-ups with production budgets under $ 100,000. Indeed, Dude Perfect(# 81, 8 million subscribers), the brainchild of five college jocks from Texas who make videos of trick shots and goofy improvised athletic feats, does far better.
Coca-Cola offers another cautionary tale. In 2011 the company announced a new marketing strategy— called Liquid & Linked— with great fanfare. Going all in, it shifted its emphasis from“ creative excellence”( the old mass-media approach) to“ content excellence”( branded content in social media). Coke’ s Jonathan Mildenhall claimed that Coke would continually produce“ the world’ s most compelling content,” which would capture“ a disproportionate share of popular culture,” doubling sales by 2020.
The following year, Coca-Cola launched its first big bet, transforming the static corporate website into a digital magazine, Coca-Cola Journey. It runs stories on virtually every pop culture topic— from sports and food to sustainability and travel. It’ s the epitome of a branded-content strategy.
Journey has now been live for over three years, and it barely registers views. It hasn’ t cracked the top 10,000 sites in the United States or the top 20,000 worldwide. Likewise, the company’ s YouTube channel( ranked # 2,749) has only 676,000 subscribers. It turns out that consumers have little interest in the content that brands churn out. Very few people want it in their feed. Most view it as clutter— as brand spam. When Facebook realized this, it began charging companies to get“ sponsored” content into the feeds of people who were supposed to be their fans.
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