Where Scale Meets Storytelling

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Thank you for that warm welcome. You just heard from Mark Zuckerberg about the most advanced business system in the world that connects people. I'm going to talk to you about the most advanced business system in the world that connects people with a brand, the Coca-Cola system. I will tell you the story of how scale meets storytelling.

Over the next decade we have committed that we will double the size of our business. The Coca-Cola system will grow from selling 1.6 billion servings a day to over 3 billion servings a day.

Now that's a big, hairy, ambitious, audacious goal. But, as we all know, size in and of itself is not a strategy. We are operating in an unprecedented business environment, one which calls for unprecedented marketing, change in the way we engage with consumers and new ways of thinking about how we go to market. 

Today, I'm going to share with you one example of how we are changing to meet that goal; how we are changing our thinking about communications and how we connect with consumers; and how we are working together with customers and agency partners. 

What I'm going to talk to you about today is the biggest integrated marketing campaign or program that The Coca-Cola Company has ever executed. It may well be the largest ever executed by any company in the world. 

What you are going to hear is the story of the Coca-Cola FIFA World Cup 2010 program. It's truly a story of how scale meets storytelling. And, it's a new secret formula for brand building around the world. 

Chapter 1: Sit in the Stands

Four years ago, we started with research. The common images of Africa that you most often see contain misperceptions and stereotypes - about Africa but also about how the FIFA World Cup will get executed in Africa. But we went out and we talked to the people in Africa. We found a very different story of how they viewed this event and what they thought this event could be. 

We found a much richer and deeper story. We found a story full of optimism - that this was a coming-out party not just for South Africa, but for Africa as a continent. It was to be an introduction of a modern Africa to the world.

We needed to understand that new Africa, we needed to get into the stands; we needed to walk the streets and get dirt on our shoes. When we did, we found tremendous pride and optimism. And, we found that there was a special link between the game of football and the people of Africa. That special link manifested itself in a massive form of celebration and happiness. 

It was there that we found the intersection of our brand with the authentic feeling, energy, and emotion of football in Africa. 

Our starting place was to develop a common language that we called that our visual identity system. Our visual identity system had to be an expression of the energy, the rhythm, the notion of celebration and happiness. We wanted it to be uplifting and optimistic; with, of course, Coca-Cola at the center. 

And we wanted to make sure it manifested itself in a modular form so that it could be used in many different media and forms. It was to be the glue, the connective tissue to hold everything together. That opportunity to build a VIS system that was branded, that was efficient and also scalable, ultimately helped us tell the story around the FIFA World Cup 2010. 

Once grounded in that VIS, we began looking for truly authentic expressions of happiness. One result may well be the largest experiential branding activity that we've ever undertaken. It was the FIFA World Cup trophy tour presented by Coca-Cola. 

We brought the FIFA trophy to the world. And this was the real deal; it wasn't something that was made of plastic. It was solid gold. When you have that kind of object you don't want it to go through the security guards and have it go through the X-ray machines. You want to create a sense of majesty and importance. You want to wrap it in its own mythology, where only previous winners of the World Cup and heads of state could actually touch that trophy. 

We brought it to 84 countries around the world. We started in Africa and brought it to every country on the continent with the exception of Libya, where they couldn't guarantee our security and safety. Nearly 500,000 people around the world in 84 countries had their pictures taken with the trophy and millions saw the trophy through television and other media. It was very relevant and very personal.

Chapter 2: Soul to Soul

In 1978, K'Naan Abdi Warsame was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. And at the age of 13 he made it onto one of the last planes out of war-torn Somalia. One of K'Naan's most vivid images in his life was being on that plane and leaving behind a sea of people and waving flags below. He was moving on and going to another country, but he knew what was left behind. 

Later, he wrote and released a song called "Waving Flags", which was a deeply emotional and personal song about that struggle in that country. Our team heard that song - it was powerful and had a tremendous beat and rhythm. And so we approached K'Naan and said, "Can you create a unique version of this to celebrate Africa and the World Cup in a positive spirit?" Well, K'Naan completely immersed himself in a partnership with us. 

K'Naan's aunt was a singer and his grandfather was a poet. He describes himself personally as a rapper/poet. The notes in the song and its energy and passion and optimism made for a great match for our campaign. "Wavin' Flag" now has been number one in twelve countries around the world. It effectively has been embraced as the anthem for the World Cup 2010, even though there is an official FIFA anthem for the World Cup. 

This whole relationship was bigger than licensing. It was bigger than getting a song. It was grounded in authenticity, grounded in the passion that he shared for what this World Cup meant in Africa and in South Africa. So it was much more than a song for a commercial, it created an emotional anthem for our entire campaign. 

You have the memory of a boy that inspires a song that ultimately leads to a campaign. You can't manufacture that - that is authenticity that is honest, emotional, and magical. And, it's scalable. We've translated this song into 17 language versions for our local markets to flex and use in the most relevant ways in their markets.

Chapter 3: Dance

You may remember a special moment in football history from Italia 1990. What a moment in it was. Roger Milla of Cameroon, at age 38, scored four goals in that 1990 World Cup. But his celebration after those goals became as famous as his goals, with Roger standing at the corner flag. He was the first one to sprint to that corner to do his dance. 

When we were brainstorming about other aspects of celebration, one of our agencies brought this little miniature Roger Milla into the room, with Roger standing near a corner flag. All of the sudden the light bulb started going off in our heads, "Wow, this could be interesting." We wanted to get Roger on our team. 

We tracked him down in Cameroon; one of our people called Roger and said, "Roger, we really would like to use you as a major focal point of our World Cup campaign." There was a really long pause on the line and our guy thought, "Cameroon, maybe the line has dropped." But it was Roger that was silent. He was overcome with emotion, finally saying, "I have never had a sponsor, and I've never had anyone talk about me and my story." It was totally overwhelming for him to think that he would be at the center of a campaign by one of the largest marketers in the world at the World Cup that comes to the African Continent. 

Roger's authentic celebration spurred us on. We built a global film based on his story. And the film could be localized, where markets around the world could insert their own players, their own unique celebration. In fact, it's been localized in twenty markets.

And it's tied right back into this whole idea of celebration, of happiness, and this notion of discovering your inner African rhythm. But most importantly, the authenticity of this campaign ultimately inspired many other activations.

It inspired a 60-minute celebratory documentary on the history of football celebrations that has been running around the world. 

It inspired our friends at EA Sports. We embedded player celebrations into the FIFA World Cup 2010 video game that have to be unlocked with special codes from Coca-Cola. And we gave them the "Wavin' Flag" song to use in the game. It was not a transaction relationship; it was always about a value and in-kind relationship. 

Those same player celebrations are on the packaging. Here in France you can get commemorative cans featuring 12 members of the French team. 

We also wanted to build sustainability into our campaign and we approached FIFA with an idea. Honestly, it was a little out of FIFA's comfort zone, but they worked with us to create an award for the players with the best goal celebrations in every match. We then donated the money for each award to a school in Africa to facilitate clean water at that school. 

This platform also allowed us to link very heavily with our global customers. Obviously, we have big customers like Walmart, Exxon Mobile, and McDonald's. We conducted our largest multi-country promotion ever with Walmart on the FIFA World Cup. It's ongoing now and it's in all of Walmart's 15 countries around the world. It's the first time they've ever done anything like this. We also have major global programs under way with Exxon Mobile and we have local activations on a global scale with McDonald's. 

And lastly, we created an online component with YouTube, which we brand, "The Longest Celebration." It is the largest YouTube channel to date, in 123 countries and 29 different languages. It's an important social media partnership for us in that it provides co-creation with our consumers. We've had thousands of videos uploaded where fans have created some unique celebrations. 

The big lesson here for us? It is that content has great value when you are willing to share to add value. When you have the right partners, partners who are willing to share--in our case FIFA, Roger Milla, K'Naan, YouTube, and EA-- and who think about things from a value exchange point-of-view as opposed to a transactional point-of-view, it brings everyone together to a better place. 

That's scaling and that's scaled storytelling. 

Chapter 4: Agencies in a Room

We never have tried to collaborate on this level before. It involved 11 agencies, brought together in the room. We said that we were going to be media agnostic. We weren't going to have any thick black lines, where, "this agency can only look at this program or do this activity." Instead, everyone around the room was focused on the big idea of celebration and happiness and how they might all contribute to bringing that to life. 

Yes, you do get tension, you get uneasiness. The PR agency came up with the idea of the 60-minute celebratory documentary. The ad agency brought great ideas on music and what we should do with the music around the world. And at the end of the day, I think we redefined for ourselves the notion of collaboration.

None of us were accustomed to this, but we are now. And everyone who comes to us signs on with that understanding. 

Epilogue

Where did all of this take us? Today we have one campaign that's running in 160 countries - the largest number of countries ever, for a single campaign. It is a simple story that we scaled around the world. It's compelling, it's authentic, and it's emotional. It crosses oceans and crosses cultures, and we believe that it will significantly help us increase brand love and brand value. 

We wanted to do this in a big, bold way and I think we did. Authentically, through collaboration; cost effectively on an unprecedented scale; and, toward leaving a lasting legacy, particularly on the African Continent. 

Has it driven results? Are we selling more stuff? We will look at all the brand health dimensions and how engaged our distribution system was. How engaged were our customers? Did it give us competitive advantage? Was it a platform to launch new news or restage a brand? And does it help us improve our overall corporate reputation? 

Now honestly, we are right in the middle of this so it's too early to know results. But I can tell you: from a consumer knowledge base perspective, from a CRM database point-of-view, from looking at relationships in the community - we see all of that moving in a very positive direction.

Then, when we look at the scale of efficiency that we've derived, we've calculated that at a minimum, we are going to save about $45 million. 

What have we learned? First, there's no shortcut or replacement for the big idea. You've got to immerse yourself, you've got to get your feet dirty, you've got to sit in the stands. You've got to understand how people in the world relate to that property and people in that market and you've got to find that emotional connection. 

Second, collaboration and sharing makes everyone better, without a question. All of our partners are committed. We've driven multiple connection points. We significantly improved our relationships and collaboration with our customers. And, we created content that was "liquid and linked." Liquid, in that it can flow into many different places, and linked by the common and powerful idea of celebration.

Third, you don't have to sacrifice authenticity to scale your business. The reality is you can only scale when the content is authentic. If it's fake, people know that and they'll shut down. Those are three takeaways for you today. 

Now, where do you all fit into this story?

I'll share one more 60-second story. It's the story of an African boy in search of his own personal celebration. It's his quest for inspiration to discover his own style. And, it holds a lot of meaning to us at Coke because we, too, are part of our own ongoing discovery. 

We are looking for new ways of marketing, new ways of engaging with consumers, new ways of engaging with agencies. We are an open source system and we are looking for the best ideas. We are fiercely loyal to our agencies but we don't care where a great idea can come from.

So, as you watch this last film, I ask you, "What's your celebration? What can you share?"