Coca Cola has made a significant financial investment to target specific products to specific demographics, for example targeting Diet Coke to women and Coke Zero to men.

We used Social Radar to measure the effectiveness.

Diet Coke gender distribution

Within the last year, 63% of Diet Coke mentions online have come from females.

Coke Zero gender distribution

Within the last year, 53% of Coke Zero mentions online have come from males.

Diet Coke vs. Coke Zero buzz

Over the past year, Diet Coke has generated 3x more buzz than Coke Zero.

Diet Coke sentiment

Conversations around Diet Coke have been an average of 64% positive throughout the last year.

Coke Zero sentiment

Conversations around Coke Zero have been 72% positive throughout the last year. One of the biggest topics of conversations recently was NASCAR, thanks to the Coke Zero 400 NASCAR Race.

Content distribution by category

Overall, 82% of chatter around Coke Zero came from Twitter and 15% from blogs, while 77% of chatter around Diet Coke came from Twitter and 21% from blogs.

For additional analysis and insights, visit http://www.infegy.com/socialradar.

Last week Pepsi unveiled a prototype of a “social vending system,” branding it as the next generation in interactive vend technology. The machine features a touch-screen that allows users to buy a drink as well as gift one to someone. By entering the recipient’s name, mobile number and a personalized text message, the machine generates a code and instructions on how to redeem the beverage at another social vending machine.

‘Social’ or ‘Vending’ mentions within Pepsi conversations

The announcement generated good buzz for Pepsi. The vending machines were mentioned in nearly 30% of all Pepsi conversations online last week.

Pepsi Social Vending Machine sentiment

People seem to like the idea. Sentiment around the Pepsi social vending machine is currently 73% positive. One of the hottest topics within the conversation was the ability to gift drinks, which was mentioned in nearly 20% of the conversations and was 95% positive.

Are computerized social vending machines the start of everyday technology becoming more social?

We received a lot of feedback on yesterday’s Social Radar Top 50 (March 2009) post and wanted to provide some additional thoughts. A brand is a promise; a collective of perceptions. Our Social Radar Top 50 Social Brands list was calculated based on overall conversation volume, including millions of blog posts, news feeds, forums, social networks and Twitter posts. To determine our top 50 brands, we aggregated a massive list of thousands of the words and brands on the web during March 2009, then conducted further analysis to rank the results. Our list measures the number of unique individuals or sources that posted content about each brand during March 2009 rather than the overall number of mentions, which would be more heavily influenced by big fans who post frequently about a specific brand.

We did not base our list on number of searches, which you could easily do using Google Trends. We measured conversations and web chatter. If you’re a brand manager, do you want to know who’s searching for your brand? Absolutely. Do you also want to know how many people are talking about your product online? Absolutely. If you need to do some home repair, say, fix your cabinets, you’ll probably start with a Google search. But are you going to blog about your experience? Probably not unless it’s extraordinarily good or bad.

We also did not base our list on revenues. The Business Week / Interbrand list of top global brands for 2008 is evaluated based on how much the brand is likely to earn for the company in the future. Interbrand uses a combination of analysts’ projections, company financial documents, and its own qualitative and quantitative analysis to arrive at a net present value of those earnings.

Coke and McDonald’s are both on Interbrand’s top 10 list, but both brands were outside of our top 50. Social media doesn’t necessarily correlate to market share. How often are you blogging about the Coke you bought from the vending machine? On the other hand, technology is always advancing and people often chat or post about new updates and features. Check out the chart below comparing chatter for Coke, McDonald’s and iPhone throughout March 2009.

There are many reasons why products have large market share. Microsoft products are still predominately used in many corporate settings, and in some cases employees at those corporations might prefer to use Apple products but aren’t given the choice. Apple’s market share has increased dramatically in the last few years. Who knows if Apple will surpass Microsoft in the future, but they are generating more buzz than Microsoft on the web thanks to passionate Mac and iPhone users.

Social media is evolving. Companies are just now beginning to hire social media strategists to interact with consumers. Social media is still a low priority for many large corporations because of lack of perceived ROI. So they are still experimenting with ways to become part of the conversation. Companies that can create real-time interaction and involvement with their customers will be best prepared to succeed in the new media world. How can companies capitalize on or increase online buzz? Will it translate to increased revenue in the future?