The Coca-Cola Company’s global initiative, the ‘Best Coke Ever?’ debate, is using artificial intelligence (AI) to create a truly unique experience for consumers and Coca-Cola fans. One of the key elements in the campaign includes allowing Coke Zero Sugar to “speak for itself” to engage consumers through visual and auditory experiences. Partnerships with social media influencers and leveraging platforms like TikTok are additional components in the global icon’s efforts to increase brand love and attract the next generation of Coca-Cola fans.
In this podcast, Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Oana Vlad, Senior Director of Global Strategy for The Coca-Cola Company, about the brand’s global initiative — the ‘Best Coke Ever?’ debate, leveraging AI as a vehicle to create unique consumer experiences, and measuring success in a campaign with many components.
The Coca-Cola Company’s global initiative, the ‘Best Coke Ever?’ debate, is using artificial intelligence (AI) to create a truly unique experience for consumers and Coca-Cola fans. One of the key elements in the campaign includes allowing Coke Zero Sugar to “speak for itself” to engage consumers through visual and auditory experiences. Partnerships with social media influencers and leveraging platforms like TikTok are additional components in the global icon’s efforts to increase brand love and attract the next generation of Coca-Cola fans.
In this podcast, Mark Johnson, CEO of Loyalty360, spoke with Oana Vlad, Senior Director of Global Strategy for The Coca-Cola Company, about the brand’s global initiative — the ‘Best Coke Ever?’ debate, leveraging AI as a vehicle to create unique consumer experiences, and measuring success in a campaign with many components.
Good afternoon and good morning. It's Mark Johnson from Loyalty 360. I hope everyone's happy, safe and well. I want to welcome you to another edition of our Lear's Customer Loyalty series. In this series, we have the privileged speaking with leading brands about what they are seeing and hearing on the front lines of customer channel and brand loyalty. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Wanda Blad. She's the Senior Director of Global Strategy for the Coca-Cola Company. Welcome, Wanda, how are you today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well. Thank you First off. Looking forward to the discussion, I know you have launched a new Best Coke Ever, so can you provide us a little bit of detail around the global initiative, the Best Coke Ever debate, and what data, insights or feedback were leveraged in the development of your campaign?
Speaker 2:Sure Well, first, for context, Mark, Best Coke Ever is in support of our ongoing acceleration of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, which is almost 20 years old now. Launched in 2005, Coke Zero Sugar has been all about delivering the amazing Coca-Cola taste without the sugar, and that focus on taste is really what you see in our global campaign Best Coke Ever, which we have had now in place globally for a few years, but every year we refresh the experience to drive more trial and to have more fans of the brand really notice and be interested in trying Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.
Speaker 2:So Best Coke Ever is a question. It's an invitation for people to decide for themselves. Could this actually be the Best Coke Ever? You only know it if you try it. So that's been very, very consistent. What we have evolved, though, as we build our muscle with emerging technologies, with AI, with creativity. This year we decided to do something very different and, instead of inviting people to talk or express the great taste of Coke Zero Sugar, we're actually inviting Coke Zero Sugar to speak for itself, and it turns out that it's apparently been trying to talk to us for quite a while, because, through AI, we were able to reveal a typography or an alphabet where Coke Zero Sugar actually has formed letters in its condensation, in its bubbles, that talk about great taste. So, really, the insight that led to this campaign is the ongoing focus around great taste, because we know once people try the beverage, they love it, but we wanted to do it in a really fresh and contemporary way that would get people talking.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Interesting when you look at taste and trial and conversion. I'm a big behavioral science advocate, so when people have a habit they stick to the habit. So they've used and had Coke and drank Coke their whole life. They're pretty loyal to it, even maybe from an emotional perspective. How are you invoking trial? How does that work and how effective is this new campaign at driving trial?
Speaker 2:So we're very pleased with the campaign, which is why it's a platform that we've sustained over the years, because we have seen trial grow, we have seen the satisfaction with the taste experience also continue growing, and we see that in the ongoing business results for Coke Zero Sugar, which is a great growth driver for the Coca-Cola company. Overall, I think the important context is, though, the Coke trademark is big and we have a lot of key initiatives. We have our marketing campaigns with food, with music, with other passion points, so Not bad, best, the best coke ever works in tandem with some of these other initiatives, and so we think about all of those things together in order to build rituals and and really deep in the relationship with coke. So I would think of Best coke ever as the starting point. It's that moment of consideration of first trial, and then we have so many other exciting things on coke that coax your sugar either leads or is a part of that help deepen that relationship which, to your point, is as much about the beverage itself as it is emotional.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You talked a little bit about artificial intelligence and how it's being leveraged to create these unique experiences for the consumer, for coke fans, letting the bottle speak for itself, which is very unique and creative. You talked a little bit about AI and ML, and you're responsible for engaging consumers and fostering a more personal experience. How is that? How do you see that going?
Speaker 2:Well, look, I think, first from just stepping back, ai for us is one additional tool that we have in the toolbox that can be used in many different ways and I think you see from from Coca Cola over the last year that AI has been a great vehicle to either create really unique consumer experiences through our create real magic Experience that allowed people to take iconic coke assets and and make their own artwork or their their own holiday cards.
Speaker 2:We've done the same with the volley, for example, all the way to product development, where AI was was used together with hi, with human intelligence, to launch one of our innovations Coca Cola. Why 3000? So, in general, ai is an exciting new tool that we continue to learn from an experiment with, but I think there are three three ways that that we really see value currently. One is actually in mining insights, in our ability to get insights at scale and faster that can help us be be sharper and more meaningful. And how we engage with with consumers to and in adding to our creativity and and delivering some of the creative experiences, like what you see through best coke ever. And three, of course, through even through the the technical process of product development there. There can be some exciting opportunities there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I know as part of the, the coquel company, you're featuring that it's gonna be me as a soundtrack, and tick tockers will have access to a filter that provides them the appearance that they're going to be singing into a Coke zero bottle to create their own videos. So when you look at some of the challenges, benefits and opportunities of managing social media influencer, it's an area of interest for the members and brands. Ability 360 you know how do you look at that. He provides and provide some examples of. You know how it's working.
Speaker 2:Sure. So first the it's going to be you, I think we're calling it filter we we think it's a really fun way to allow people to participate in the concept of of cove, zero sugar speaking, because it's important that we're not only doing things one way. It there has to be a relationship, we have to be building engagement and and this seemed like a really natural extension of the idea and and what we're going for with with this year's best coke ever overall. So we're excited and and and really committed to always offering participatory experiences. So that's that's the context as to why, why that's important and, you know, hopefully people will have as much fun with it as we had demoing it and singing along ourselves.
Speaker 2:And, of course, there's there's a degree of of liberty that we're taking, surrendering the product and the product experience and and allowing people to to have fun with it directly themselves. But we think that's important and we think in this way, it's a very connected experience to the overall campaign and we're excited about it. So we do have it's open, not just to influencers, by the way, I mean, it is open to anyone. So that's important for for coke as as much as we, when we create these types of unique experiences. We want to make sure that they're democratic and as many people can engage as as as they want.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you look at measurement. Measurement is a big challenge for brands as well. With regard to social media, the attribution, that final mile, uh, it can be very challenging for them. You know, how do you look at measurement of success of, of of your in social media efforts, your influence, your efforts, uh, your partnerships how are you measuring them?
Speaker 2:It depends. So it depends on our initiative objectives. In this case, for sure, we'll be looking at engagement and um, the number of people that um, that participate in the experience. That's uh, that's key. But more broadly for for this campaign overall, I think it's important just to remember that it's a integrated campaign that has many different components. Social media is a part of it, music is another traditional media, in some places really unique experiential activations through an AR activated mobile vending machine, and in totality, we'll be looking at all of these elements and seeing how they contribute to to driving, trial, um and and hopefully continuing to improve taste perceptions for Coke's, your sugar. So we do look at everything in totality, while, of course, by by channel and by um uh plan component, we dive a little deeper too.
Speaker 1:Okay, we recently just released a paper on next generation customer loyalty, what it means to brand. We reserved uh, researched over a hundred brands. The respondent next generation customer loyalty to brands can, uh means can vary from brand to brand. And so what does next generation customer loyalty mean to Coca-Cola?
Speaker 2:Well, loyalty for us is exactly what you said earlier. It's beyond that first time trial. It's building a relationship with the brand that is physical and emotional. So we obviously want to be building lifetime fans of the brand that enjoy the beverage on a regular basis, whether that's weekly or at a different frequency. That's one thing that's really important to us Our people enjoying our products on a regular basis, rather than here and there. The second thing is how they feel about our brand overall and of course, there we look at a lot of different insights like brand love, affiliation, likelihood to recommend to others, some of the things that you would expect. And we're happy to see, in external rankings, that Coke has made a lot of progress in this direction in the last couple of years, obviously returning to the top 10 most valuable brands last year but also continuing to really improve in rankings, even when it comes to, for example, gen Z most loved brands.
Speaker 2:So it's for us, I would say, loyalty, and loyalty is about the relationship that we build through the physical experience, but also the emotional association with the brand.
Speaker 1:Okay, it sounds like Next Generation Customer Loyalty is something that you and a Coca-Cola company have defined.
Speaker 2:I don't know that we call it exactly that, but yes, we do have a point of view of what relationships we'd like to be building with our fans.
Speaker 1:yes, Okay, great. Well, the approach that you're taking looking at trial, integration with the social media influencers and comprehensive campaign all the way around the program it's great to see because that usually leads to a great, emotionally engaged and loyal customer. So it was great to hear your story and thank you very much for taking the time to share with us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. Nice to meet you.
Speaker 1:Nice to meet you as well. Have a wonderful day and everyone else. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen. Until then, join us back for another edition of our Leers and Customer Loyalty series. Thank you.