In a country where negativity is being fueled 24/7, on all channels, Coca-Cola wanted to bring people together through positivity. So we innovated the iconic glass bottle and launched a symbolic Coca-Cola that’s literally full from the half up, as a way to activate optimism and positivity. Each bottle displayed positive news on the back, carefully selected by a team of journalists and PR hijacking the negative conversation with a positive point of view.

The consumer journey included various PR components, including reaching out to top Romanian influencers, out of which 67 joined the campaign completely for free

In 2018, Coca-Cola refreshed its global brand purpose, with the mission to bring people together through positivity.

Romania ranks amongst the top 10 unhappiest countries in the European Union. The negative conversation is affecting people so badly, that 50% of young people are considering leaving the country in the next year. Romania is the second country after Syria in terms of emigrants.

This was the perfect opportunity to launch a conversation about optimism. We needed to create a powerful awareness campaign that exposed the target audience with Coca-Cola’s new values.

A meaningful way of speaking about the brand purpose, with the product at its core.

Before we could spread optimism, we wanted to see what was making Romanians pessimistic.

What we found were the media and the press, where the negative news are largely outweighing the positive. No wonder people were becoming anxious and isolated.

So, if no media channels were reporting on good news, we invented our own.

This is how the Half Full bottle was born: the iconic Coca-Cola bottle, filled literally from the half up.

The bottle became a media outlet, with positive facts carefully selected by a team of journalists and PR printed on the back labels. Coca-Cola managed to hijack a negative conversation with a strong point of view. One that people naturally engaged with since it was based on curated positive facts.

We launched the Half Full bottles with a multi-channel campaign, activating the positive side of life in each of the communication channels.

In preparing the campaign, we looked at studies proving that Romania is one of the most pessimistic nations in Europe. Next, we linked this finding with outside factors that could be contributing to this general state of mind, and landed on the dire broadcasts of news from national media outlets.

A team of journalists and PR collected positive news about Romania from the most prominent media outlets and institutes in the country, which were then printed on the labels and attached to the bottles.

The news featured hopeful statistics about Romania and positive stories about Romanian citizens such as Olympians, athletes and artists.

The campaign targeted all Coca-Cola drinkers, with special focus on the young generation (18 – 30). The people who, because of the negative reporting in the media and the press, have a pessimistic outlook on life and don’t believe that positive things can happen in Romania.

We created thousands of limited edition Half Full bottles featuring positive news about Romania.

We sent them to the top Romanian influencers, out of which 67 of them joined the campaign absolutely for free, sharing the news and their own optimistic messages on their social channels.

The campaign was meant to activate positivity in Romanians through all channels, including nationwide outdoors displaying positive news, an online video and banners mirroring negative news on online news outlets. People could chat with a Facebook chatbot, personalize their own Half Full bottles and have them delivered at home, as a reminder of positivity. The messages sent by the people were also aired on a large scale digital outdoor, in the middle of Bucharest, Romania’s capital.

63% of the core target audience was reached

48% of young people who saw the campaign, interacted with the chatbot

67 top influencers answered the call and joined the campaign for free