The soft drink market is saturated and youth today have never had more choices. For an iconic brand like Coca-Cola®, who has been around since 1886, the challenge was to create desirability, build affinity and ultimately drive consumption with this discerning audience.

For this final launch of 2023, Coca-Cola® identified an opportunity in technology to provide the deserving climax for Creations - the divisive debate on AI.

AI had solidly dominated headlines for most of 2023, with sentiment varying from deeply dystopian to wildly utopian. Most brands' attempts to jump on the AI bandwagon were often perceived as gimmicky and self-serving.

So how could the most mainstream brand contribute to this hotly contested debate in a relevant, desirable and meaningful way, and emerge on the right side of culture?

Coca-Cola® Creations is all about product innovation that invites young people to try Coke for the first time. We knew we had to create a story that was intriguing, exciting and differentiated from the dystopian AI talk that hogs headlines.

Coca-Cola® Y3000 - the first Coke flavor to give everyone a taste of the future - was born.

Combining human creativity and artificial intelligence, we explored unique ways to bring to life this futuristic world filled with positivity and optimism - tapping into people’s imagination about what that world could look like.

So we partnered with an AI from the Year 3000 to help Gen Z look into the future with positivity, giving Gen Z a Real Magic experience to see, taste, and experience the future with AI like never before.

As a response to the overwhelming pessimistic outlook towards the future and the dystopian view of technology, Gen Z is weaponising technology to reimagine their future and rehumanise their world, creating a future powered by hopepunk and techno-optimism. They are resolute in their belief that a defiantly optimistic community can create change, with technology as an enabler.

This insight into youth culture provided the opportunity for Coca-Cola to shape and lead the debate on AI, pivoting the conversation towards a shared vision of a future powered by creativity, possibilities, and the most optimistic use of technology. A people-first approach was rooted at the heart of the campaign, placing AI in everyone's hands to 'taste', co-create and celebrate the optimisitic possibilities of Year 3000.

As part of Coca-Cola®’s AI effort in 2023, we looked at how Y3000 could play a pivotal role in that. Right from the beginning, we used AI to help us define the flavor and initial design explorations.

To bring people into an immersive Y3000 experience, we created the Y3000 AI Cam that allowed people in more than 30 markets to see the future and travel to the Y3000.

Accessed through a QR code in the label, we put the power of Gen AI into everyone’s hands. The whole experience was designed to look and feel visually seamless, from the moment you scan the product to the final depiction of the future you would get from Y3000 AI.

This allowed people all around the world to transform their surroundings into a Y3000 world - fuelling their imagination about a positive future.

"Y3000 placed Coca-Cola at the heart of culture:

- #1 AdAge AI Activation of 2023

- 5.2 billion earned media impressions, the highest Coke Creations ever (2.5x vs second highest).

- 1952 media placements from cultural tastemakers like Hypebeast, Highsnobiety, NYLON, I-D Magazine, and Hypebae and in top news outlets like CNN, People, Fortune and CNBC.

- Y3000 CAM was the most socially shared Coke Creations digital experience ever.

Reached a new younger audience with:

- 12 million influencers content views and 658k video content views.

- 250K unique Y3000 visions generated.

- Reached a new younger audience with 260mil+ total discussions generated amongst Gen Z with #Y3000 in Greater China alone.

Drove interest for the brand with 693k new visitors to Coke hub."