Coca-Cola® is the first ever Future-Flavored Coke. So we wanted audiences to taste, see, and experience it like never before, using the most exciting tech available at the time, ready to be used at scale - AI.

From flavor profiling to inspiring us during the can design, we made sure AI was integrated throughout the project.

But it truly came to life during the Y3000 AI Cam, where we developed and trained a custom AI model to show people the Year 3000 through a very simple, fun, and engaging digital experience - delivered in a way that only Coca-Cola® could.

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?

As AI’s role in advertising/marketing is ever-evolving, we wanted to make sure that our campaign helped a historic brand like Coca-Cola venture into launching their biggest AI-centric campaign at a global level, meaning we had to navigate various legal regulation frameworks that differed by region and even on a country level. This required a very tight partnership between marketing and legal teams to ensure we could deliver a consistent, fun yet accessible user experience to the masses whilst maintaining privacy, fairness, transparency, and accountability in how the digital experience was executed. Such stringent requirements ensured that both the creative idea and execution were not burdened by any unnecessary features and complexities, making the experience a simple yet elegant one, allowing the most number of people to access AI through the product.

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 digital experience with AI that looked and felt futuristic and optimistic, differentiated from the dystopian perception that hogs headlines.

So we created Coca-Cola® Y3000- the first Coke flavor to give everyone a taste of the future.

To bring it to life, we partnered with an AI from the Year 3000 - as a custom AI model trained by us to show a positive vision of the future - giving Gen Z a Real Magic experience to see, taste, and experience the future with AI like never before.

With different executions throughout the launch, it was the Y3000 AI Cam the one that showed innovation more clearly, allowing people to explore the Y3000 in a simple yet engaging way, easily accessible to all the 30+ markets.

Early MAY: Sign off on creative idea

Mid MAY: Interation of creative idea with technology partner

Early JUN: Sign off on revised creative idea

Mid to End JUN: Refinement of wireframes and UX

JUL: Creation of stimulus to train Gen AI model

Early AUG: Beta Demo ready

End AUG: Security and risk assessments complete

Early SEP: UAT and bug fixes

4 SEP: Final coding refinements

6-8 SEP: Final UAT and QC

9 SEP: Deployment to server

12 SEP: Public launch

For the Y3000 AI Cam digital experience, we wanted to give people the unique opportunity to transform their surroundings using AI and see how it would look like in the Y3000.

First, by scanning the QR code in the pack, people accessed a microsite that introduced them to the Y3000. After allowing camera access, they take a picture of their surroundings. Then, our custom AI model - Stable Diffusion 1.5 as the base image model and ControlNet to adapt it to our desired Y3000 visuals - would process the image in the background. To train the model, we used a combination of images already existing in Stable Diffusion, as well as royalty-free images, allowing for more variation.

In the interface, users can customize the final design with a grid that allows them to finalize their prompt, tweaking it according to their vision of the future - more nature, more cityscape, more rounder shapes, or more angular shapes. This would then influence the outcome of the prompt.

In the end, our AI model generated a video file with an animation, embedded in the website, allowing people to download the final result or share it on socials.

From the beginning, we knew this was one of the most ambitious Coke Creations drop ever - from both the use of an ever-evolving technology as well as scaling it to more than 30 markets globally. But we were still surprised by how successful it was.

With over 250k uniquely generated images within the campaign period of 3 months, we managed to create one of the most engaging digital experiences in the history of Coca-Cola® Creations, surpassing the previous digital experience in usage by more than 700%.

And we did it by creating a simple, accessible yet engaging digital experience that made people excited to use the power of Gen AI to see the future - making them feel positive about the future.