Coca-Cola to Host Google+ Hangout Next Week

In another vote of confidence from Corporate America for Google+, Coca-Cola is planning to launch a Hangout on the network next week.
Coke’s Hangout, scheduled for 2 p.m. EST, will feature company archivists Ted Ryan and Jamal Booker taking questions from the Coca-Cola Archives. The Archives have been featured on CNBC and Bloomberg TV as well as in Coke’s Virtual Online Museum, but it is not open to the public and the company has never hosted an event there.
Ryan says the talk, scheduled to run 30 to 45 minutes, will include a look at some Olympics memorabilia and a document showing Coca-Cola’s original patent award in 1887. It will not, however, be scripted. Content will be mostly determined by participants’ questions.
Coke announced the Hangout on its Google+ Page as well as via its Coca-Cola Archives Facebook Page and Twitter feed. The first eight people to log onto the talk will each be one of the nine people others see in the Hangout. (As with all Google+ Hangouts, only nine feeds at a time can be seen; the rest of the people who participate watch the action.)
Google opened Google+ up to brand pages in early November. Since then, more than 3.5 million users have put brands in their circles, according to researcher Simply Measured. Coke, meanwhile, has the sixth largest brand page, in terms of “circlers,” according to the researcher, with about 326,000. Though that’s a far cry from Coke’s Facebook fan base, which numbers close to 39 million.
Michael Donnelly, director of worldwide interactive marketing for Coca-Cola, says he’s optimistic about Google+’s growth. “From a social perspective, we want to be where our consumers are,” he says. Donnelly says that other ideas for Hangouts are analyst talks with investor relations and panels with teens.
Though Cadbury U.K. claims to have been the first brand to host a Google+ Hangout, on Feb. 9, others, including President Obama and the Muppets have also hosted (separate) Hangouts recently.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Steve Snodgrass