The median age of consumers who drink soda weekly+ has increased 6+ years over the past 20 years. For Gen Xers, Millennials, and everyone before them, the soft drink industry was known for its ongoing “Soda War”, a never ending dispute for market share between Pepsi and Coca-Cola’s core brand flavors. But as new options started to emerge, this war began to fade into the background, and Gen Z’s investment in either side was tenuous.

To change the narrative Coca-Cola Creations was born, a new platform with an objective of driving penetration and increasing the number of young, core Coca-Cola weekly+ drinkers to secure the future for the company. Primary markers for success included:

-Earned media impressions

-Increased net sentiment compared to other Coke campaigns

-Driving organic consumer search

-Driving organic mentions in social media among Gen Z

Younger generations have infinite choices when it comes to soda, and Coca-Cola needed to find a way to get them to reconsider the iconic red brand. This led to the launch of Coca-Cola Creations, a platform that takes Gen Z passion points and turns them into limited edition flavors, each with their own progressive, future-forward universe built around them.

With the release of Coca-Cola Starlight, Coca-Cola Byte, Coca-Cola Dreamworld, Coca-Cola Soulblast, and Coca-Cola Marshmello, the world was invited to try the taste of space, pixels, dreams, action, and music itself. Through a variety of everyday touch points, each universe came to life through a technological first.

Every new creation became a cultural event with lines around the block, bidding wars, and sprints through shopping malls, all just to buy a Coke.

Leveraging their interest in emerging technologies, Gen Z’s sources of inspiration were brought to life in new and innovative ways.

For our approach to launch, we took a page from fashion brands' strategy of exclusive drops and applied it to CPG, emphasizing how each of our Creations would only be around for a short time before going away forever.

To spark conversation each new product had an indescribable flavor as well as a first-of-its-kind digital experience. Starlight transported viewers to the first AR concert on a Coke, featuring intergalactic popstar Ava Max. Byte, the first Coke born in the Metaverse, invited gamers to a custom Fortnite map, as well as a platform game mapped to the Coke itself. Dreamworld gave fashion fans a dreamy digital wardrobe and a digital festival experience from Tomorrowland. Soulblast let people virtually unleash power-ups from the iconic anime Bleach. And Marshmello gave users a chance to become the electronic artist, with an experience on Twitch that allowed everyone the chance to control the artist, live.

The younger generation became deeply invested into what the platform would offer them the next time it came around.