Coke And Free Advertising

After the amazing Eepybird.com exploded onto the scene thanks to YouTube (and later Revver), there was a sharp divide between the reaction from Mentos and Coca-Cola. The Italian company that makes Mentos saw it as free advertising and immediately wanted to do something with the Eepybird team - saying they probably got $10-million worth of free viral advertising from the clip. Coke effectively looked down its nose and sniffed.

John Stichweh, director of global interactive marketing, cast doubt on whether the company thinks engagement is a goal worth pursuing. The measurement that really matters, he said, is sales. "How many more cases of Coke am I selling? I don't know," he said at the Ad:Tech conference in New York. According to the story, the Coke exec also questioned whether doing interactive or "user-generated" advertising was any cheaper than a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in traditional media, saying that online campaigns are cheaper up front but "there is a cost element in terms of internal labor." I guess he's got a point - if by "internal labor" you mean paying someone to run around at headquarters pulling people's heads out of the sand and showing them how to click on the "most popular" link at YouTube. Bookmark murdok: Mathew Ingram is a technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at www.mathewingram.com/media.