The Vision

Coke continues to be one of the most iconic brands in the world, with an intellectual property that transcends generations. It embodies people coming together, core values, and openly speaks about invoking youth, and pureness. When Charlotte Phoenix approached AOE Creative to create and execute its ad campaign for Coke, we knew we needed to showcase those same values Coke is synonymous with.

The Process

Our process started with not only pulling Charlotte Phoenix’s vision for how it wanted to showcase Coke alongside its brand, but also understanding what Coke best wanted to convey with the partnership. Previously, Coke executed advertisement campaigns with other esports organizations, companies, and supporting agencies, but these campaigns lacked a tie in to Coke's core values. Although companies garnered adequate numbers, Coke’s branding and voice was lost in the process. Because of this, our creative process focused equally on branding as much as it did performance. We wanted to display the same look and feel Coke does with its organic advertisements as well.

Coke decided on using its newest slogan “Bringing People Together” for the campaign. Our ideation revolved around moments and icons in gaming that bring people together, the core moments of popular video games that represent teamwork and squads coming together to earn a dub. Additionally, we looked for gaming items that “bring things together”, even if not specifically people in a literal sense. However, we also wanted to include items from games that Charlotte Phoenix was involved in to add benefit to their team as well.

Ultimately, our concepts embodied these shared experiences: the healing drone in Apex Legends, an old school arcade machine, and even the Call of Duty monkey bomb that attracts zombies in games, along with several other concepts. As you can see, the ideas ranged from actually bringing physical people together to in game characters and items together as well.

Our Findings

Our results were well above industry standards. Our cost per mille for Twitter over the course of two campaigns was $3.02 and $3.24 respectively, nearly half as expensive as industry standards. Additionally, our Instagram and Facebook ads were either on par or better than other competitor ads within esports. Our goal was two million in reach over the course of six weeks of advertising. With a total spend of $8,500, we were able to amass 2,235,278 in reach as well as 2,800 clicks over the course of four different ad sets across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Conclusion

Coke brings people together through its memorable connection to holidays, events, and a shared love of the beverage. To harness this same experience, AOE tapped into the shared experiences of video games that bring people together, both in game and IRL. This resulted in an ad campaign that connected the nostalgic taste of Coke with the magical nature of video games to generate a high number of impressions and engagements, exceeding the expectations of our client (and beating their budget), as well as showcasing Coke's newest flavor: Dreamworld.