The Campaign

Chinese teens speak a completely different language that only they understand. And they only use this language in the digital world where they decipher the codes using phonetics of Chinese words. Our creative idea was to leverage this secret language and work with dozens of teen influencers to co-create hundreds of codes based on this teen language, which we then beta tested to select a series of 80 Coca-Cola codes. Using illustrations to bring to life the phonetic beauty of the codes, we made them part of the Coke labels to connect with teens. While it might be a language that made zero sense to adults, to hundreds of millions of teens, it was the language of connection, usually only used online and now world brought into the real world.

Creative Execution

For Share a Coke, the idea was the bottle. Hundreds of millions of them, seen by hundreds of millions of teens, all summer long. After co-creating codes with teen influencers, we designed fun illustrations around them to help teens decipher their meanings while connecting with each other. These 80 codes were launched with a TVC alongside an LBS digital activation that invited teens to connect and share the code. For example, 521 pronounced “Wu Er Yi” sounds like “Wo Ai Ni” or “I love you” in Chinese. To illustrate love, we drew two characters sharing a can of Coca-Cola. For 2333, we created three 3s ‘Laughing Out Loud’ together. Gibberish to you? That’s the point. It was a meaningful campaign for teens, that only they could understand and connect with using Coca-Cola.

With an ROI of 1.16, the Share a Coke summer campaign was a huge success. Objective 1: increase brand love to Exceed 2016 (+6%) While the 2016 summer campaign lifted brand love an unprecedented 6%, the 2017 Share A Coke code campaign increased brand love by 10% reaching an all-time record high for Coca-Cola in China. Objective 2: Grow Volume by at least 6% Beyond brand love and social engagement, the campaign also generated real business results. Despite the challenging +6% KPI meant to double the volume growth of the 2016 summer campaign, the 2017 Share a Coke Code campaign led to a volume growth of 10% and transaction growth of 14%. By taking such a bold leap and co-creating with teens, Coca-Cola created a truly engaging, youth oriented campaign.

What if we used social media as inspiration to reinvent the most iconic packaging in the world, co-created with teens and based on their own secret language? Share a Code is an integrated campaign to make Coca Cola relevant to Chinese teens again. We executed our creative idea through packaging, traditional media, digital media, and an activation with a celebrity teen heartthrob. What truly makes this an integrated campaign was the consistent use of one idea across all touch points, the sharing of a secret language for teens to better communicate with each other in the real world.

It’s not easy to be a teen in China. They suffer from intense pressure to succeed—often at the expense of others. And this makes them feel demoralized and alone. They are intensely connected to their phones—a conduit to escape, entertainment, and friends in a virtual world. Through social listening, we discovered they’ve even created their own secret language online using codes. And while they may feel more open in the virtual world, electronic bubbles are isolating them further from real connection. We set out to free their codes from their virtual world, so teens could openly express and connect in real life through Coca-Cola.