In spite of its racially and culturally diverse roots, according to The New York Times and The Guardian, Brazil has one of the world’s highest LGBTQ death rates: one every 25 hours. Despite our apparent openness, we are an increasingly hostile, dangerous place for these minorities, which have become more and more intimidated by hate speeches disseminated by haters not only on social networks, but also by some of the country’s most conservative leaders who will run for president in 2018. Within this context, featuring a Drag Queen on the packages of Coca-Cola’s products Brazilian families purchase the most is a bold move, and one that stands for representation.

To increase Coke sales and bring the brand closer to young targets, we created Coca-Cola FanFeat: a competition for fans of Brazil’s biggest hitmakers, in which the three winning artists would record a single, a music video, and a concert together.

Each Coke package had a picture of an artist – and a potential vote.

To make things fairer, the hitmakers were chosen based on their representation in the country’s musical scenario, without distinction of gender, race, colour, or music style. That gave Pabllo Vittar, an emerging drag queen, the opportunity to compete on equal terms with all artists.

In the FanFeat, we used fans’ frenzy to sell more Coke. The mechanics behind the idea was simple: one can of Coke equals one vote. All fans had to do was buy a can and vote on the brand’s website, where they could also follow the competition between their idols with a real-time ranking – which made the competition even more fierce and boosted the fandoms’ engagement even further.

More than 1.3 billion Coke packages were produced, split equally among the artists – that is, more than 144 million Coke packages featuring a Drag Queen’s face distributed around the country.

The campaign was first aired officially on December26 and the voting period spanned 10 weeks. In April, the FEAT formed by the three most-voted artists was announced, and phase 2of the campaign begun: recording the song, shooting the music video, and the concert’s live transmission on Facebook, YouTube, and cableTV.

- A 14.1% increase of Coke cans sales;

- Record-breaking teen engagement for Coca-Cola’s promotions;

- 3 million votes;

- 1.2M+ interactions on Pabllo Vittar’s social networks;

- Top 3 most-watched commercials on YouTube Brazil during the campaign;

- More than 6 million visits to the campaign’s website;

- Pabllo Vittar was one of the top 3 most voted on the campaign’s website;

- 100% Media Recognition of the campaign’s materials with Pabllo Vittar;

- 18.3 M Earned Media;

- The music video with Pabllo had 2 million organic views in only 2 days.

- The live concert with Pabllo on Facebook broke Coca-Cola Brasil’s records and Facebook Brasil’s record in consumer goods (600K live video views).

- The music video was #1 trending on YouTube.

- The song was #14 in the Top Viral Spotify Brasil.

Featuring a Drag Queen on Coke packages around the country triggered a massive number of comments, videos, and fake news created by conservative Brazilians. To deal with that hate wave, instead of taking an official stand, Coca-Cola chose not to respond to the criticism directly, but to stick to its campaign, and encourage the artist’s fans to speak up and overshadow haters. To that end, we created exclusive content and experiences for fan clubs, in addition to encouraging Pabllo’s messages asking for votes and support. And it worked. In the end, support messages to Pabllo handily outnumbered hate messages, and fans managed to place her in the Top 3 and, of course, in the hit of the year.

Coca-Cola is known worldwide as a democratic brand that is ahead of its time. For the brand, supporting causes that are relevant to society and representing everyone in its campaigns, with no distinction whatsoever, is nothing new.

But having a clear brand speech is one thing; putting it into practice and impacting 200 million people with it is another. That is exactly what FanFeat did.

Conceived to tackle the challenge of using the music territory, one of the most appealing to young targets, to get closer to new generations and boost sales, FanFeat was an engaging campaign that used teens’ frenzy and passion for their idols – and, at the same time, it showed Brazil the equality speech Coca-Cola has always advocated for.