Coca-cola: BEAT OF CHINA

Credits & Description:

Advertiser: COCA-COLA
Agency: LEO BURNETT SHANGHAI, WWWINS ISOBAR
Category: Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Advertising campaign: BEAT OF CHINA
: Jeffrey Jin

Effectiveness
Coke’s sponsorship of the London Games delivered 61% spontaneous awareness among Chinese consumers, topping the 46% the brand delivered in 2008 by almost one-third. The involvement of celebrities in the integrated effort was a successful strategy, with Coke leading all non-alcoholic, ready-to-drink brands on this metric during the event. And we delivered on our most ambitious goal – generating OVER 200 MILLION submissions, ensuring that Coca-Cola was seen as enabling very Chinese support to the country’s national sporting heroes.

Execution
We launched with China’s five famous Olympians asking for support in online teaser videos seeded across the web.100 days before the opening ceremony, we hosted a national call to action event with this 'Dream Team', further inviting consumers to submit their beats, across paid, owned and earned media with TV, digital, out-of-home, in-store, packaging and activation events. We aimed to make it as easy as possible for everyone to participate– via live experiences, kiosks and street crews and digital channels (brand’s website, videos over instant messaging services, mobile). Entries ranged from dance beats, to quirky kitchen utensil sounds, to high-tech digitized voices.The final anthem was remixed and handed over to the national Olympic team during a live TV event broadcast simultaneously across 4 national channels. Throughout the Games, as part of our cooperation with CCTV, when a Chinese athlete won Gold, THE BEAT OF CHINA anthem was played in the broadcast.

Strategy
A long-time Olympic sponsor, Coca-Cola wanted to fight rising competition from home-grown brands to be the brand that truly understood China.With the Beijing Games still a source of immense pride, China approached London 2012 wanting to show that they didn’t need home turf advantage to dominate.Younger Chinese in particular were actively discussing China’s upcoming medal challenge. Would the country be able to improve upon its performance in Beijing? There was a universal desire in the population to make a personal contribution to the team. The opportunity was to harness Coca-Cola’s core value of opening happiness (creating positive energy) to do just that.Imagine 1.3 BILLION voices cheering. This was THE BEAT OF CHINA idea – a nationwide call to contribute a personal cheer – to be compiled into one song for China’s Olympians to take to London. Coca Cola would gather these cheers, creating the FIRST consumer-generated anthem.