The Good

As reported on the cover of NMA this week, Coke has followed in Pepsi’s footsteps, shifting digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010.

In the 1980s and 1990s the battle between the two dominant brands intensified to such an extent that the term ‘cola wars’ was used to describe the feud. Numerous advertising and marketing campaigns have been rolled out over the years in competition, but it seems that Coca-Cola will position its official Facebook and YouTube pages as the lead online channels for upcoming international activity for its Coke Zero and Fanta brands

The Bad
This afternoon, Vodafone has been left red-faced after its UK division’s official Twitter account tweeted an offensive and potentially homophobic message to its 8,000 plus followers. The tweet has since been deleted, but it’s still accessible here.

The majority of the Twittersphere had put it down to a hack until the company tweeted again saying; “A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. Please keep your faith in us.”

By next week, this will probably be old news, but in terms of accidental tweets, it’ll go down as one those high-profile examples of what can go wrong.

The Ugly

Following reports of an extra-marital affair with the ex-girlfriend of international team-mate Wayne Bridge this week and an overwhelming amount of calls for his resignation online, John Terry was stripped of the England captaincy.

According to the Football Association, the move followed a meeting between Terry and England’s head coach, Fabio Capello, at FA headquarters at Wembley. Max Clifford, who is representing Terry, commented on the BBC’s breakfast show this morning that he did not believe fans would be that bothered by what Terry allegedly got up to. However, the forums and fan sites are fairly united is dismissing his behaviour as unacceptable.