Coca-Cola’s Adam Brown on Social Media, Expedition 206, and Happiness

Coca-Cola’s Adam Brown has quite a 2010 planned. The company will launch its Expedition 206 campaign, the massive global social media experiment poised to send three “happiness ambassadors” in search of happiness in the 206 countries in which Coke does business. We were lucky enough to chat with him recently. Here’s a clip from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access:

eMarketer: What is the goal of Expedition 206?

Mr. Brown: We want to bring the idea of happiness to life and have as many people as possible participate. The three people will blog, share photos, videos, interviews, tweets and ideas about what makes people happy around the world. It’s the latest expression of the “Open Happiness” campaign brought to life through the power of social media.

eMarketer: It sounds like a publicity stunt.

Mr. Brown: We want to make this as genuine as possible. The three people will travel by themselves. There’s no production team. We’re crowdsourcing—our fans will tell us where we should go to find happiness. Fans of Coke are already involved on multiple social media platforms—Facebook, orkut, Bebo, YouTube, Google—and we’ll populate the content through all of these properties. We’ll have an online dashboard on the Expedition 206 Website through which fans can interact with our team.

eMarketer: Which corporate department is spearheading this initiative?

Mr. Brown: The project is a joint effort between the marketing, public affairs and corporate communications teams.

eMarketer: Will Coke be using any paid media to promote Expedition 206 or tying into existing ad campaigns?

Mr. Brown: It’s primarily an earned media program. We’ll spread the word through all the social media platforms. It’s mostly viral. But we have to do some paid media and tie-ins to existing media programs. It’s a tapestry—we can weave earned and paid media together.

eMarketer: Do you expect to develop original content for TV and the Web from Expedition 206?

Mr. Brown: We’re exploring all opportunities with cable nets for original content and series.

eMarketer: How will Coke prove the return on investment (ROI) on Expedition 206?

Mr. Brown:We will be looking at what earned media provides from an ROI standpoint. We want to know what’s working and creating buzz, and what isn’t. We are using a cloud-based philosophy and we want to leverage all the new communications platforms as they come online. We can really adapt and empower our fans to create compelling content where they see fit.

The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access subscribers only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.