Our brief was startlingly simple: re-establish Coca-Cola’s cultural leadership as an icon of happiness in today’s complex world. To talk about happiness in a jaded world full of bad news was a tough ask. A global deep-dive on current

cultural tensions revealed one live, raw, painful tension: All over the world, we can’t believe the inhumanity and unkindness that we’re capable of showing each other.

Turning on the news angers and depresses us, and we ask ourselves where our humanity has gone. We know we need kindness more than ever. 98% of consumers agree it’s the key to a happier world, and breaking science proves that giving makes us even happier than receiving. Yet at the same time, we live in a world in which being kind to strangers is considered crazy. Naïve, foolish and stupid. Well, then, let’s all be crazy, we said. Let’s celebrate the givers, wherever they are. Because they’re the ones who make the world a happier place. These are all true stories about the world’s crazy-kind people.

The Let’s Go Crazy campaign has been one of Coca-Cola’s most successfully globalized creative campaigns, having run in 79 markets across the world. Overall, the campaign exceeded its aim to re-invigorate the Coca-Cola brand as a cultural leader, igniting real action for happiness creation around the world.

Above all, what this case goes to show is that even in difficult category circumstances, brand equity can be built and strengthened through creative work that is based on a truly human insight and the desire to prompt positive social change. Creativity can take a human truth about how our brains work, and use that to engineer a social movement around kindness. Creativity can take a product mired in controversy and elevate it into a brand that champions universal values. And above all, creativity can inspire genuine, heartfelt action, in a way that no dry hard facts or social initiatives can.