As Official Partner to the 2010 World Cup and committed to Sports for over 80 years as a way towards happier consumers, Coca-Cola came up with a brief to do four things: 1) Celebrate the first ever African World Cup.

2) Inspire happiness.

3) Give the fans something they could make their own.

4) Do it on a global scale.

The campaign that emerged was based on a seminal African moment from the ’90 World Cup; Roger Milla’s celebratory dance that’s inspired two decades of ever more elaborate goal celebrations around the world. The twist that Coke put on it was to invite the fans and the players to create their own celebrations. To inspire them, Coke collaborated with African artists in all disciplines to create a bespoke 2010 identity & soundtrack which were executed in various creative ways, and then ‘set free’ via bought, owned & earned media.

The Campaign was launched via a song, interpreted by an upcoming Somali artist, inviting the fans to celebrate. A Coca-Cola produced 60 minute long form television program telling the history of goal celebrations, broadcast in 105 countries, helped then establish the campaign amongst fans around the world. The campaign was then executed across all possible channels, from in-store to experiential, packaging to digital, mobile to music & TV to video games in which we partnered with EA to bring goal celebrations to life inside the FIFA video game. We also created the first worldwide on-line branded radio called Celebration Radio. All of this to inspire the fans, and having set the idea free, Coca-Cola took a back seat to allow them to bring the idea of celebration to life however and wherever they pleased, Coke acting as a facilitator for their entertainment, and opening up some celebrated happiness.

Executed in 160 markets around the world this was a truly integrated global campaign that even for a global campaign, delivered quite astonishing results; the Coca-Cola ‘Waving Flag' celebration song hit the #1 position in 18 countries around the world and generated in total over 80 Million views on Youtube. The Coca-Cola World Cup content delivery widgets reached 43 Million consumers and our Panini promotion got over 2.4 Billions views. Yes, 2.4 BILLION! In terms of sales, over the duration of the campaign, global volume went up 4.5% for brand Coca-Cola, highest growth in 10 years, and even higher in Latin America (7%) where the campaign was heaviest. Finally Coca-Cola broke the traditional models and kept an ownership of every piece of content we created in order to give back the profits, over $500,000, to RAIN, a water initiative that helps provide access to clean water to schools in Africa.