There was a fascinating little bit of social media strategy revealed on Knowledge @ Emory’s website about Coca-Cola’s recent social media experience. It shows the perfect intersection between the “dude you can’t control your brand anymore” attitude of the past two years and the current reality of social media engagement for big brands.

Since April 2009, a page devoted to The Coca-Cola Company (boasting nearly three and half million devoted fans and gaining an average 75,000 fans each month) has been the top of the Facebook charts. Allfacebook.com currently puts it at number 13. Coca-Cola had nothing to do with the creation of the Facebook page celebrating its products.

The genesis came from two Los Angeles residents, Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski. When Sorg hunted for a Coca-Cola Facebook page to “friend,” he found almost 200 pages, but nothing he deemed legitimate. So with the help of Jedrzejewski, he launched a Facebook page dedicated to the world’s most recognized soft drink. Within seven months, the page’s fan base topped three million.

Facebook administrators and Coca-Cola executives took immediate notice. alike. Coca-Cola flew Sorg and Jedrzejewski to its Atlanta headquarters to talk about how the company could assist the creators with the page without intruding. Adam Brown, director of Digital Communications, The Coca-Cola Company, says of the move, as well as of the company’s overall attitude toward social media: “We’re taking the laissez-faire approach.”

Wait up, Brownie. Flying two guys to the home office of the world’s biggest marketing company after they have attracted 3.5 million people to Facebook is about as laissez-faire as raising the price of a six-pack of Diet Coke. This was more of an acceptance of social media by the suits, and a coronation for soda geeks. It was an agile, intelligent move by Coke. Now they’re involved with social media, but they can look they’re not. It may not look like genius, but it sure tastes like it. Genius lite, maybe. A genius sub-brand.

According to Sundar Bharadwaj, associate professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, the company doesn’t have much of a choice. “There is absolutely no way any company can control the marketplace,” he said at a recent Emory University marketing conference. If a company tries to shut down a Facebook page or control content on other sites, it’ll be “worse off,” adds Bharadwaj. “The smart thing is to try to embrace it, and the smarter companies are clearly taking that approach.”