Did you know that Coca-Cola just wrapped its largest social media project ever? No? Have you even heard of the campaign before now? If you can say yes, you’re probably in the minority. 

There’s no reason why we shouldn’t all have heard about Expedition 206 – the scope of the campaign was mammoth. Three brand ambassadors (selected by a public voting contest, of course) visited 186 countries in less than a year to find what made these populations of Coke drinkers happy. The ambassadors documented their trip through blog posts, photos and video, all aggregated on a Survivor-meets-Amazing-Race-style website. There’s also the requisite Twitter account and Facebook Fan Page dedicated tab.

The campaign involved three agencies (one specializing in experiential marketing and two specializing in the digital space ) and the combined powers of the global public relations, advertising and marketing teams within Coke, plus a partnership with Lonely Planet.

Coke officially says the project was a bigger success than they had imagined. But what were their expectations?

Coca-Cola has perhaps more resources than any consumer brand on the planet. It’s not just cold hard cash they have access to (estimated at $68.73 billion) – they’re the most visible and valuable brand the world has ever known. They have public trust. They don’t have to waste time getting everyone up to speed on their story. They have the luxury of instant brand recognition. While I couldn’t find any official statistics on this, I’d imagine a majority of the people in the world has, at some time or another, purchased an ice-cold Coca-Cola.

Given their dominance, you’d expect a huge social media campaign like Expedition 206 to at least make a dent in the mind of the public. But… not so much. An informal poll on Twitter showed that no one had heard of the campaign, outside of the official press releases announcing the start and end of it. The comments on trade industry articles about the campaign express a similar bewilderment.

Expedition 206’s Twitter account only acquired a measly 1,777 followers in a year's time. We’re the first to argue that the amount of Twitter followers doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it’s pretty interesting that a global giant could only muster the enthusiasm the size of a high school. Despite this, Coke says it racked up 650 million media impressions and engaged billions of people around the world. So why didn’t anyone know about it?

It looks like measurement of success for the campaign was vague. The company says it wasn’t interested in Twitter followers; rather, it wanted to focus on “local activation” and “local level engagement.”

Still, Coca-Cola touts this as a social media campaign – not a community relations campaign, or an experiential marketing initiative. Given this, why do there seem to be no concrete goals, benchmarks for success, means of measurements or, at the very least, some kind of memorable impact? This seems typical of many social media campaigns -- all hype and flash, but little substance, actual value, or measurable success.

Is this an indication of the value of social media as a channel? Is there just too much noise to break through and garner the attention of a large population, even for a heavyweight like Coca-Cola? Did Coke simply mismanage, misdirect, or mislabel the campaign? With the success of social media campaigns like Pepsi Refresh (which I think we heard a little<i> too</i> much about), where did Coke go wrong?