A campaign for a booming movie market
This time around, Coke's China campaign is all about the movies,
with famous film and TV quotes replacing the brand name on bottles.
Most are from famous Chinese films, though some are from Hollywood.
"Life is like a box of chocolates" from "Forrest Gump" is one.
The idea is that "by buying a Coke you can share it with your
best friend, your family, or whoever, and use the Coke as a way of
expressing how you feel," said Richard Cotton, Coca-Cola China's
content and creative excellence director.
While last year's lyrics labels could be scanned with a
smartphone to pull up songs to share on social media, this year
Coke is keeping things simple. They're just labels. (And it would
have been "unbelievably expensive" to buy the rights to use clips
from dozens of movies, as Mr. Cotton noted.) Youku Tudou, China's
Netflix-meets-YouTube, is a partner in the campaign, and extra
celebrity content will appear on its platform. Online video is huge
in China, which also has the world's second largest box-office
after the U.S.; 15 new movie screens were added in China every day
in 2014.
McCann, Isobar and Starcom worked on the campaign. McCann did a
"Jurassic Park"-like commercial (see below) that ends with a
dinosaur whimpering for a sip of Coke. (There's no official
partnership with "Jurassic World," the fourth installment in the
series, debuting this month in China two days ahead of the U.S.
release.) More content will roll out over the summer.
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Isobar's contributions included an augmented reality experience
involving a video clip where people can insert their own image so
it looks like they're interacting with a dinosaur, and share it to
social platforms. It partnered with local video-shooting app Kaipai
on that program.
"There are many countries that have essentially lifted or
adapted the names idea that was first launched in Australia," said
Rohan Lightfoot, Isobar Shanghai managing director, in an email.
"China has consistently chosen a more innovative approach. There is
so much competition in the drinks category in China that you really
have to innovate to stand out."
The U.S. market, meanwhile, is sticking to the original concept
of names on bottles for a second year, with quadruple the number of
names available.