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Coca-Cola Fifa World Cup

Coca-Cola aims to become 'the icon of happiness' during World Cup 2014 through real-time storytelling explains global digital chief

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By Stephen Lepitak | -

June 24, 2013 | 4 min read

Coca-Cola aims to “become the icon of happiness through telling more stories” over a 300 day period, as it uses real-time marketing to tell the story of the Brazilian World Cup in 2014, the soft-drink company’s global head of digital has stated.

The brand, one of the main sponsors of next year’s football tournament, is to use digital real-time storytelling techniques to engage with consumers during the build up and course of the World Cup, as revealed last week by Coca-Cola’s Jonathan Mildenhall, VP of global advertising strategy and creative excellence at the Coca-Cola Company while attending the Cannes Festival of Creativity.

Following up, the brand’s digital chief Neil Bedwell, spoke to The Drum to elaborate further on the company’s real-time plans.

“Our brand above all others has the right to talk to people every day and to talk with context,“ stated Bedwell. “We don’t need to explain what the product is or where to find it, so we should be telling stories around what the brand means. Stories are only powerful when there’s context, that’s our mission.

“In order to be able to do that you need technology, which we’re investing in. You need a process to listen what is going on, understand it and then decide what to do with it. Then you need creative people to turn a potential conversation into real content which makes that conversation bigger,” he continued.

The project will aim to convey the story of the tournament over a 300 day period with the attempt to make it universally inclusive as conveyed through FIFA’s The World’s Cup messaging. “That is a big claim and we really need to do something for everyone, so we’re taking the actual World Cup trophy itself on a tour to 95 places and 86 countries, including some really wild and interesting ones,” he revealed.

The tour of the World Cup will be similar to the tour of the Olympic Flame, sponsored by Coca-Cola ahead of the London 2012 Olympics, with activity aiming to bring people together, but this time attempting to put context to the tour through real-time messaging.

Bedwell admitted that lessons could be taken from the work of newsrooms by the brand to communicate connected real-time events.

“For us it’s about, just like our product, say a can of Coke, you can take it with you wherever you go and it makes your day a little bit nicer. That’s what we’re trying to do with our social engagement, which is acting the same way. For a few seconds a day, which is how you consume the product, we’ll give you a little hit of happiness through good, contextual content, distributed socially that’s shareable, that’s snackable, that, if we’re smart, increases our role in telling a few more positive stories.”

Bedwell also said that he didn’t believe there were any real-time marketing experts or that any brand had yet truly mastered the format as yet. “Oreo did that great thing at the Superbowl which everyone talks about, but they don’t always get it right and everyone is learning as we go, which is kind of fun. There’s no safety net with real-time.”

In April, Coca-Cola combined its carbonated soft drink strategy team with its integrated marketing communications team in order to form a new internal group led by Wendy Clark, now senior vice president of the global sparkling brand centre. This move will allow Coca-Cola to create real-time messaging with a more integrated decision making process in place during the World Cup and beyond.

Coca-Cola Fifa World Cup

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