Brand storytelling: the case of Coca-Cola's Journey corporate website

Abstract

Brand storytelling is an evolving branding technique which involves continuous narratives about the brand through publishing and sharing useful brand-related content with consumers. Publishing content no longer includes publishing in traditional print media only, but also via electronic and social media in various media formats and on different platforms. In doing so, marketers endeavour to engage with consumers by creating consumer experiences through brand-related content. Non-media organisations have thus also become publishers of their brands although there are no clear-cut guidelines but numerous perspectives on how to communicate brand content by means of storytelling. This study explores, identifies and explains types of consumer experience which were evident on the Coca-Cola Journey corporate website, one of the world’s leading brands at the time of the study. A theoretical perspective is adopted that borrows from and is also adapted from both media management and marketing communication. Brand storytelling is theoretically delineated and then applied to the proposed
types of consumer experience which could be created through content for media organisations, as put forward by Peck and Malthouse (2011). The content on the Coca-Cola website is narrowed down for analysis and then explained using this perspective. The findings offer insight into the type of brand stories that marketers could consider when drafting content marketing strategies for nonmedia organisations.