Chinese teens speak a completely different language that only they understand. And they only use this language in the digital world where they decipher the codes using phonetics of Chinese words.

Our creative idea was to leverage this secret language and work with dozens of teen influencers to co-create hundreds of codes based on this teen language, which we then beta tested to select a series of 80 Coca-Cola codes. Using illustrations to bring to life the phonetic beauty of the codes, we made them part of the Coke labels to connect with teens.

While it might be a language that made zero sense to adults, to hundreds of millions of teens, it was their online world brought into the real world.

For Share a Coke, the idea was the bottle. Hundreds of millions of them, seen by hundreds of millions of teens, all summer long. After co-creating codes with teen influencers, we designed fun illustrations around them to help teens decipher their meanings while connecting with each other. These 80 codes were launched with a TVC alongside an LBS digital activation that invited teens to connect and share the code.

For example, 521 pronounced “Wu Er Yi” sounds like “Wo Ai Ni” or “I love you” in Chinese. To illustrate love, we drew two characters sharing a can of Coca-Cola. For 2333, we created three 3s ‘Laughing Out Loud’ together.

Gibberish to you? That’s the point. It was a meaningful campaign for teens, that only they could understand and connect with using Coca-Cola.

With an ROI of 1.16, the Share a Coke summer campaign was a huge success.

Objective 1: increase brand love to Exceed 2016 (+6%)

While the 2016 summer campaign lifted brand love an unprecedented 6%, the 2017 Share A Coke code campaign increased brand love by 10% reaching an all-time record high for Coca-Cola in China. It was also the widest brand love gap between Coca-Cola and our competitor for the year.

Objective 2: Grow Volume by at least 6%

Beyond brand love and social engagement, the campaign also generated real business results. Despite the challenging +6% KPI meant to double the volume growth of the 2016 summer campaign, the 2017 Share a Coke Code campaign led to a volume growth of 10% and transaction growth of 14%.

By taking such a bold leap and co-creating with teens, Coca-Cola created a truly engaging, youth oriented campaign.