Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke campaign has gone worldwide, enticing consumers with the ability to see their own or their friends' names replace the logo on a can or bottle of Coke. Since launching in 2011 in Australia, it has been so popular that the campaign is now in more than 50 countries.
The latest local market launch is Nigeria, featuring 600 names that “have been picked from the rich array of names across the various regions” of the country, according to a press release. If customers can’t find a can or bottle in stores now with the desired name, they will “have the chance to create their own personalized” one during a nationwide activation next month.
"Share a Coke transforms the global Coca-Cola brand into a special, personal experience for our consumers," stated Patricia Jemibewon, Marketing Director, Coca-Cola Nigeria.
"By swapping our iconic Coca-Cola logo with personal names, we give all our consumers a unique opportunity to connect and share their personalized Coke with the people who matter the most to them—friends, family and loved ones, either in person, or virtually."
After the campaign launched in Australia four years ago, Coke sold more than 250 million personalized bottles and cans in one summer.
“My reaction was childlike,” Lucie Austin, director of marketing for Coca-Cola South Pacific at the time, says of when she first saw her name on a bottle. “I knew many others would have the same reaction.”
They did indeed, and the campaign proved so popular that other Coca-Cola markets clamored for the campaign. The Aussie marketing team set a high bar, using social media and other even having consumers text names of people they’d like to share the beverage with, which was then transmitted on a huge digital billboard in Sydney.
“We knew people would want to publish profanity and abusive language, so we had to put filters in place,” said Jeremy Rudge, creative excellence lead at Coke. “We came up with a ‘block list’ of over 5,000 words our printers literally could not print and the sign could not display. Getting there was a pretty funny process. We had some very senior people in a room literally brainstorming swear words.”
From Australia, Share a Coke went on to New Zealand and China. The turning point, however, came in 2012 when the campaign won seven awards at the Cannes Lions festival.
The campaign then launched in the UK in the summer of 2013, where it returned last summer with more than 1,000 names on its bottles and more than 150 million personalized bottles sold.
The US finally saw the campaign in summer 2014, leveraging 250 popular names and a nationwide tour that allowed consumers to name personalized mini-cans.
That helped the brand see US sales go up for the first time in a decade, the Wall Street Journalreports. Sales volumes rose 0.4 percent in the 12 weeks through Labor Day compared with the same time frame a year earlier, while sales dollars rose 2.5 percent. That’s a pretty big victory when the company had been suffering losses for more than a decade.
The Journal notes that Coke spent $3.1 billion on advertising in 2013 and another $1 billion will be added to that budget over the next three years. Clearly, the beverage giant is anxious to keep consumers feeling the love—even if the product isn't calling out to them by name.
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