Coca-Cola Australia and their Ad Agency Ogilvy have been leading the way in global Coke campaigns in recent years, with the “Share a Coke…” name campaign originating here in 2011. As this campaign is 4 years old and the novelty of your name on a Coke can has worn off, in Australia they are trialing a completely different campaign build on a very similar insight.
Colour Your Summer ad next to Sydney Coca-Cola campaign
Where as previously the “Share a Coke” campaign deliberately changed their iconic logo by varying the writing, “Colour your Summer” does away with the distinctive red for pink, orange, blue, green and purple. The campaign, again centred around the on shelf product, is an integrate affair with OOH, digital and social leading the way, and and a distinct lack of TV, based on the insight that the teen target audience are not reachable through traditional channels such as TV. Diane Everett, Coke’s Group Marketing Director, describes the campaign layers as snackable content, designed to reach 98% of their target audience.
Simple Key Visual set up for Image Recognition
Although this campaign takes a similar kind of bravery from the marketing department (deliberately playing with the iconic branding) I am not sure it has the same sharability as the name campaign (see how difficult it was to get the original “Share a Coke” campaign through approvals here). Yes, one might tweet a picture of oneself drinking a purple coke, but once you have seen the coloured cans once, the novelty disappears. Are you as likely to buy your favourite coloured coke repeatedly, as you would if you find your name on a bottle? There is a hashtag #colouryoursummer to encourage sharing, and image recognition technology means photographs of all 6 coloured cans can win you prizes, but this requires effort from the consumer, which can often be the downfall of any interactive campaign especially where millennials and younger are concerned. Coke will have to be very careful that there are enough instant wins to make it seem like like a fair exchange for their time. Their interactive OOH screens found in Sydney CBD, amongst other places, do do this very well – dispensing a free coke for the person who rearranges the cans, but but I have yet to win anything online despite photographing several colour your summer posters via their website.
Me with my free Coke from the Sydney CBD OOH Screens
I think the problem here is we are looking the difficult second album, probably fantastic in its own right, but not quite as good as the first. However, like the “Share a Coke” name campaign before it, this campaign has all the marking of working globally. Again, colour transcends culture and language, and although certain colours may have different connotations in different countries, yellow being a prime example and interestingly not used here, it will always be someone’s favourite colour.
I will be interested to see how this campaign develops over the next couple of years and if indeed it is a success, will we see a pastels range or is that perceived as all a bit too sophisticated for our content-snacking target audience.
Coca-Cola & Travelling Brands 