Building on Share a Coke’s success
After the award-winning first-year activation, year two focused on applying our learnings, optimizing the experience, and growing the business. The content below covers some of the pitch work. Not shown, are the following months of production design including various retail, QSR programs, sports partnerships, and other extensions of the program. What’s noteworthy is the story of a revolving, new, and ad-hoc assembled team defending AOR status and fine-tuning an already successful program.
Rich and poor, celebrities and us extraordinary unknowns all drink the same Coca-Cola – it’s what we call the “great unifier.”
“All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”
-Andy Warhol.
In the first year of Share a Coke, we encouraged teens to share with a friend. In the second year, the goal was more ambitious – to use a shared moment with Coke as a catalyst to turn strangers into friends.
A focused pitch
The first year of Share a Coke was a hit, and we sold in some ideas well past the initial scope of the experiential tour. In the second year, we focused our pitch efforts on optimizing the sampling tour, and new ideas targeted to additional Coke client teams, including the following:
Process note:
If brainstorming and concept development are the closest to my heart, putting the ideas into a winning pitch is, naturally, a close second. Across all agency experience, I tend to be given difficult and high-stakes projects due to my proven ability to lead through uncertainty and tough deadlines. This was one of those “could be scary” situations tamed by building a foundation of “smart creative” and executing with cool-headedness and clear communication.
Second Year Optimizations
While the project scope expanded, we never forgot the core objective of creating the perfect trial occasion for new audiences. To this end, we honed in on the details and took a user-centric POV from start to finish. This includes what would draw one’s interest from afar, beginning the experience from the first step on site, and ensuring that the first taste of Coca-Cola is a perfect one.
Modular, Scalable activation
As the program gained popularity, demand called for high-volume sampling hardware. Large-scale trailers were used at festivals and sporting events while the modular kiosks were shipped to order per locations such as theme parks. Brand Ambassadors engaged guests from their first step, turning lines into a fast-moving, festive environment.
See it in action!
One improvement of the second year is that we were able to add a substantial number of names to our database, allowing a far more diverse and inclusive range of cans to be personalized without seeking assistance from staff.
(Additional team credit: AD: D. Yeh, CW: M. Lee, GCD: K Gosselin, Production: Momentum)
