Chinese cities may seem identical in essentials, but actually each of them has its own food and taste, behind which is the unique history, traditions, and customs of the city.

The Chinese beverages market is highly competitive. Coca-cola has adhered to the motor of “Coke with Meal”. However, it proved a big challenge to penetrate traditional Chinese food culture and resonate with young consumers.

This year, Coca-Cola cooperated with Meituan Dianping, China's leading e-commerce platform for services, in hope of relying on the latter’s advantages of mass data about food and restaurants, to implant Coca-Cola into the everyday diet of consumers in different places and establish a strong correlation between Coca-Cola and Chinese traditional food.

By that, Coca-Cola forged the image of “essential beverage with a meal”, promoting local influence, bindings with delicacies, and offline sales.

“What shall I eat today” may be the question that every Chinese thinks more than twice every day. Thanks to the wider access to mobile internet, young consumers in China are used to searching for restaurant information on Meituan APP or Dianping APP before offline meals. When dining, they also frequently consult the two APPs for recommended dishes and reviews.

Relying on Meituan Dianping as a tool among foodies, Coca-Cola extended its long-time advocacy of “Coke with Meal”. With the can as an idea carrier and Chinese traditional cuisines as a touch point, Coca-Cola made consumers proactively scan the code on Sleek Cans, to listen to the stories of food in every city, and invited food lovers to experience the “the extraordinary food tour in 30 cities in China”, which helped build a unique bond and cultural identity between Coca-Cola and traditional food.

Meituan Dianping has 400 million annual active users and 5.8 million annual active merchants. This “Coca-Cola Sleek Can Food Tour” event focused on young people who enjoyed delicacies and life, which, according to the big data analysis of Meituan Dianping, were also loyal fans and frequent users of Meituan Dianping.

To achieve effective TA reach and brand communication, the two parties took “scanning the can to start the extraordinary food tour in 30 cities” as the entry point and “Open Happiness with Tastes of Different Cities” as the communication idea. Relying on the LBS technology, they accomplished the closed-loop experience marketing of online H5 interaction to offline restaurant coverage, revealing the stories behind Chinese Chinese food and establishing a strong correlation between Coca-Cola products and food scenes.

This “Coca-Cola Sleek Can Food Tour” event distributed 250 million special cans of Coca-Cola in 30 Chinese cities. The event was divided into the online and the offline dimensions:

(1)The customized H5 of “scanning the can to start the extraordinary food tour in 30 cities” was launched online, with the innovative interaction of telling consumers stories of Chinese traditional food. It also recommended nearby restaurants based on users’ locations to lead them there for experience.

(2) The offline coverage included 10,000 restaurants, such as Sichuan restaurants and BBQ restaurants, which were decorated by Coca-Cola Sleek Cans. There were also “Coca-Cola + RMB 1 coupons” to encourage consumers to scan the can to explore stories behind traditional food while enjoying their meals.

In this one month and a half event, the total exposure was 200 million. 30 Chinese traditional cuisines were introduced on the cans, which attracted 7.5 million scans, and 10 million food coupons worth of RMB 100 million were distributed, with 10,000 restaurants in 30 cities in China covered and 2 million users attracted to spend offline.

The participating consumers actively made comments on Meituan Dianping, expressing their approval of Coca-Cola’s insights into Chinese traditional food culture. They said that they would order Coca-Cola when taking not only Western fast food but also Chinese food.

The restaurant owners also recognized the fusion of Coca-Cola and Chinese food. They would promote the proportion of Coca-Cola in dining beverages and even launch some Coca-Cola+ customized sets, to attract customers with the fusion of Chinese and Western food cultures.