Coca-Cola: Share a Coke, share a lyric

Source: MMA Smarties, Vietnam, Bronze, 2021

Downloaded from WARC

Coca-Cola, a soft drinks brand, increased market share in Vietnam by creating mood playlists and
scannable cans that people could scan to listen to songs that reflected their mood.

Coca-Cola is always looking for moments where consumers are seeking an uplift in their mood
during the day through a break that is engaging and refreshing through the consumption of Coca-
Cola.
It knew that the moment of slump for consumers is most common in the afternoon and they are
often looking for a way to uplift their mood.
By using search volume and other consumer signals, the brand identified four different moods that
are most prevalent during afternoon, chose songs matching those moods and printed the lyrics of
the songs on Coca-Cola cans, with a scannable code that led to songs based on that mood.
The campaign reached more than six million users within six weeks and more than 685k people
visited the landing page, with half of that traffic coming from scanning the cans, which led to an
8% increase in market share.

Campaign details
Brand: Coca-Cola
Lead Agency: Mediacom
Region: APAC

Strategy
Objective

Coca-Cola has been a pioneer of audience engagement through innovative media solutions, which breaks the
category clutter and enables Coca-Cola to be the top-of-mind brand among its target audience. For that, Coca-
Cola is always looking for moments where consumers are seeking an uplift in their mood during the day through
a break that is engaging and refreshing through the consumption of Coca-Cola. By owning these consumption
moments, Coca-Cola recruits new users and creates a habit loop, thus increasing both penetration and
frequency of usage for the brand.

Target Audience

The key demographics that Coke targets are teens and young adults from 15-24 years old. Gen Z (the digital
natives) is an 'always on' generation surrounded by constant stimulation. They seamlessly transition from one
thing to another, needing regular shifts or changes in gear. While older generations like a pause, and value idle
time, this generation is different. They're not looking to contemplate; they're looking to participate. They don't
want downtime. They want uptime. And rather than breaking once or twice a day, they are fluid, constantly on
the move.

Creative Strategy

Given the breakneck pace of life that the "always-on" generation thrives on, it becomes very difficult to engage
them and make them pay attention, unless they find it an utility in their daily lives. Music has always been an
activation platform for Coca-Cola, and data showed us it still remained a key passion point to engage them. 65%
of Gen-Z listen to music online, that is 126 index over the population. Millennials who are influencers of tech,
entertainment, and music are 94% more likely to be on Spotify. And 82% of them listen to music on mobile.
Given this data, leveraging music as an activation platform seemed a bull's eye strategy. The taste of Coca-Cola
is the uplifting shift in gear they need when they're bored, when it's the same old, same old, to lift them up by
turning up their rhythm. But at the same time, it needs to drive consumption and share the experience. So we
came up with the "Share a Coke, Share a Lyrics" campaign that combines packaging and music to drive both
consumption and experience.

Context

Though music has always been an activation platform for Coke, this is the first time we integrated music with a
technology that leads to interaction with Coke cans.

Execution
Overall Campaign Execution

"Share a Coke, Share a Lyric" campaign combined tapping an audience insight, technological innovation, use of
the brand's packaging along with a media strategy to drive the campaign goals. The key component of the
campaign was the Coca-Cola can and the mobile phone that is omnipresent among our target audience. We
knew that the moment of slump is most common in the afternoon and the mood that the consumer is looking for
uplift can be different. By using search volume and other consumer signals, we identified four different moods
that are most prevalent during afternoon - peppy, motivational, humorous and freestyle. Based on that, we
chose songs matching those moods and printed the lyrics of the songs on Coca-Cola cans, with a call to action
asking for scanning the can. When the can is scanned, it led seamlessly to a special Coca-Cola page that asks
for the mood you are in. Depending on the mood – it played a music that is from that genre. This gave the
consumers a digital platform on mobile to uplift their afternoon slumber through an engaging experience with
music and Coke.

Mobile Execution

We chose songs and printed the lyrics of the songs on Coca-Cola cans, with a call to action asking for scanning
the can. When the can is scanned with mobile, it led seamlessly to a special Coca-Cola page that asks for the
mood you are in. Depending on the mood – it played a music that is from that genre. 85.5% of the visits to the
playlist site was through the mobile device.

The mobile was thus the most important enabler for the campaign.

Business Impact (Results)

Context

As a leader in the CSD category, Coca-Cola is always on the lookout for new consumption opportunities.
According to internal research, the CSD drinking moments are over-indexed during weekdays afternoon in
moments like timeout at school. However, there are number of competitors like energy drinks and RTD tea, who
also compete for the same moments and that had seen increasing lapsers from Coke to energy drinks.

Evaluation

The campaign reached more than 6 million users within 6 weeks. Through programmatic, the awareness videos
drew more than 60% completion rates, showing the consumers' interest in the can and the mechanism. The
influencer contents drew more than 3 million views. But more importantly, the interaction with the can was
beyond expectations. In 6 weeks, we got more than 685K visitors on our landing page, with more than 50% of
the traffic coming from the scanning activity with more than 120K consumers listening to music from the playlist.
Also, the campaign had great accuracy, with 61% of the traffic being teens and young adults.

The brand itself saw a positive impact as the campaign resulted in a lift in sales that led to Coca-Cola improving
its market share by 8% – thus showing that an innovative technology coupled with data-based brand insights
can drive not only consumer engagement but also translates into hard business results.

Market Impact

The campaign brought a new way of combining technology seamlessly in the consumer experience loop thus
giving them an interactivity without interruption.

Creativity
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