Coca-Cola CMO Joseph Tripodi has delivered a stinging riposte to the multitude of recent critics of Facebook, after its disastrous IPO flotation and questions over advertising value in recent weeks.


Speaking Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Tripodi spoke of the value of "brand advocates" and believes that social platforms will lead to the "holy grail" of marketing.

He said: “As a marketing community we have to understand that in Facebook we have a platform like we’ve never seen before. We need to come together to design unique solutions for a unique platform. If we take creative solutions that were developed for a more traditional television world and put them on the social platform, were kidding ourselves. We need to be having new thinking.”

“That platform is at the early stages and we’re still learning how we engage and leverage it, but this hysteria that I’ve seen lately [about Facebook], I think it’s very short-termist and not thinking about the long term implications and the implications of engaging with people on that kind of platform.”