This paper describes Coca-Cola's Real-Time Intelligence platform, built together with the System 1 Market Research agency BrainJuicer and brand consultants Talk Inc. Through this initiative, Coca-Cola gained access to real-time insights into its consumers' engagement with the brand, to anticipate and quickly act on opportunities, positively impacting Coca-Cola equity. The platform, initially developed for the World Cup 2014, is now a reality within Coke and perhaps the richest legacy left by the event. This case proposes an important question to all marketers: How ready are we to face the new reality of empowered consumers wielding the power of technology and media to produce unprecedented velocity of brand interactions? Real-time intelligence is essential for this new reality.
Digital technology radically changes the way we build and communicate knowledge. The old pattern of centralized senders and massive receivers is no longer acceptable: 'truth' is the consensus of many opinions, with human knowledge following wikipedia rules of collective construction. Since brands are built out of perceptions, their planners have to genuinely engage the way Millennials (those born after the 1980s) think and feel. The Collaboration Panel is an effort to educate corporations on how to interact with this new world, where brands have become the collective result of interactions between consumers, and corporations can no longer be dictators.