Coke leverages pop-culture and Alexa to seamlessly deliver a unique digital brand experience that drives awareness and favorability for the brand, while triggering easy and immediate conversion.

“I see Coke” connects consumers to content that’s not only entertaining, but something they love. This emotional connection activates consumers, shifting their mindset into buyer mode, triggering a new habit while driving consumer lifetime-value up.

By leveraging the one thing Pepsi lacked, being an entertainment cultural icon, Coke hacked consumers' content consumption habits to trigger purchase through this “world first” experience.

“I see Coke” converts impressions into sales through content activation.

Whilst Coke is a global titan within the soft drink category, in KSA the brandstruggles to compete with Pepsi in terms of consideration, market share and commercial presence.

Pepsi has always been a firm favorite in the Middle East, and this preference and leadership can be attributed to both cultural and commercial factors. Pepsi’s head start vs. Coke within the Saudi market has led the brand to become heavily intertwined in the DNA of everyday Saudi lives, meals and shopper culture. Not only were shelves and fridges dominated by “blue”, but even amongst consumers Coca-Cola was oftentimes referred to as “Red Pepsi”.

This advantage in the market and within culture started in 1967, when the brand was put on a blacklist due to its alleged connections with Israel. This boycott lasted roughly 25 years and allowed for Pepsi to become the undisputed lead on shelves and within Saudi hearts.

Coke is a global giant, yet in KSA it suffers with lower consideration and market share than Pepsi. While the basics of marketing such as price, distribution and product are all taken care of, the brand struggles to be loved and appreciated as much as the competition.

With that in mind, Coke wanted to find a way to break through the “blue wall” while getting closer to consumers in the Kingdom. The goal was finding a point-of-differentiation that could trigger brand closeness, naturally leading to sales.

To succeed. Coke would have to truly understand how shoppers behave not only when they shop for drinks, but also when no shelves are in sight and yet the cravings appear.

The challenge laid in devising an experience that could help Coke infiltrate culture and merge buying and consumption behaviors, ultimately making consumers crave a coke when they would usually choose Pepsi.

The challenge for Coke was to carve a space in the hearts of Pepsi-loving Saudis while turning them into Coke shoppers.

Knowing that it’s easier for consumers to crave a brand when they’re in love with it, Coke had a simple yet beautiful solution on how to activate and captivate Saudis.

Whilst Pepsi owned the ad-breaks, Coke saw an opportunity to take advantage of Saudi's average of 3h35m watching video content to turn their beloved daily activity into a conversion experience driven by the increasingly popular “Alexa”.

The partnership with Alexa turned every home with the device into an interactive activation with a shelf for consumers to buy Coke almost impulsively, removing the barrier of the “Blue Pepsi wall” from their eyes.

Once the connection happened, technology turned something meaningful into a relevant disruption, leading to a seamless and convenient commerce experience, while creating a new shopping ritual.

User watching a TV show sees Coca-Cola on screen

He/She says: Alexa I SEE COKE

Alexa replies: where do you see it

User mentions the name of the movie

Alexa replies back with a cheeky reply related to the movie and sends a promo code to their emails.

The email also includes the link to the exclusive e-retailer (Nana), to direct the user to the Coke page and encourage them to purchase any Coca-Cola product and get 50% discount (cap up to 50 SAR).

Push was done on social media only through medium-to-macro influencers in Saudi, who launched the idea and explained the promo mechanics while showing a fun interaction with Alexa.

A tutorial video on how to launch the skill on their app was also shared.

HINTS posters were created to drive more engagement and get followers to guess the movie based on the illustrations of specific scenes.

Despite Pepsi’s chokehold of Saudi hearts and stores, Coke successfully found a way to tip the needle in their favor. Coke discovered a unique brand opportunity born from deep understanding of people’s preferences and behaviors. Through this one-of-a-kind voice-activated commerce experience, Coke was able to capitalize on its cultural equity to connect and convert Saudi shoppers.

Through the brand’s insistence in developing innovative commerce and experience led solutions “I See Coke” not only enabled the brand to achieve growth whilst avoiding competing with Pepsi on traditional shopper channels, but helped the brand earn Saudi’s attention, by being at the heart of cultural conversations throughout the period.

- 96% of Conversion rate on coupon redemption

- +236% Brand Mentions vs previous internal campaign benchmark

- 26% View Through Rate across multiple platforms; However, Coca-Cola achieved 49% of View Through Rate on YouTube.

- 30% increase in views vs average campaign performance.