Defying its customary practices with an assist from “The Bear,” a new ad from Coca-Cola Co. features multiple brands—from Coke to Honest Juice—a rare move for the drinks giant that could pay off behind efficiency, customization and retail merchandising, executives say.

The ad, called “The New Guy,” debuts today. It was created by Majority and WPP’s dedicated Coke agency Open X, in collaboration with Christopher Storer, the creator and showrunner for FX and Hulu’s acclaimed television series “The Bear.” The ad was inspired by that show’s season two episode “Fishes,” which featured a chaotic Berzatto family gathering.

“The New Guy” isn’t nearly as coarse as “Fishes,” but conveys a similar energy in telling the story of a man meeting his girlfriend’s extended family for the first time.

The ad shows Coca-Cola brands including Coke, Coke Zero Sugar, Diet Coke, Sprite, Fanta, Smartwater and Honest Juice. Its emotional hook—along with smart choices about the role each brand plays in the story—makes the combination work where Coke’s other attempts at so-called portfolio advertising have failed, said Shakir Moin, chief of marketing at Coca-Cola North America.

“It is easy to put a picture of all the brands together, but it doesn’t connect with a regular human being,” Moin said in an interview. “There is no story to it, there is no emotion to it. We as a company have tried this in the past a few times, and it hasn’t worked because it wasn’t connected to a human inside. That was the problem.”

For example, Moin cited a 2012 spot in Asia that featured Coca-Cola, Sprite and Fanta. Consumers there interpreted the presentation of the three beverages as “choices” and not as distinct brands themselves. Moin was a Coke marketing director in Asia at the time.

Coca-Cola rival PepsiCo has also experimented with portfolio advertising, including in a spot that ran during the 2022 NFL Playoffs that featured football greats such as Peyton and Eli Manning enjoying multiple PepsiCo snacks and drinks during a road trip to the Super Bowl. PepsiCo has also run a holiday-themed campaign with multiple products featuring snowmen and backed by the Hall & Oates classic “You Make My Dreams (Come True).”

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Pushing the paradigm

While Coca-Cola’s “The New Guy” didn’t break any rules, it did require the company to push past “internal discomfort” with the concept of mingling its brands in ads, said Moin. “Pushing the paradigm” of marketing its family of brands is one aspect of an ongoing marketing transformation under Global Chief Marketing Officer Manolo Arroyo, Moin added.

“I would say as a company, we are becoming a lot more friendly to this idea of coming across as uncomfortable to create breakthrough work,” Moin said. “Otherwise, we are just not going to do the great work that we try to do.”

The wide variety of products featured in the ad required the company to find the right moments to make them work authentically, said Alex Ames, director of content and creative excellence for Coca-Cola.

“Working on individual brand content, you’re always having conversations about, okay, we’re gonna shoot the 12-ounce glass bottle of this product. And that’s what we use throughout,” Ames said. “But here, when we were on set, we had something like 60 different packs, and working with the crew behind ‘The Bear’ going, ‘Okay, where does this feel organic? Where does this feel real?’”

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The campaign will be supported by paid digital and social, organic social, out-of-home, search, and commerce and shopper media extensions, Coca-Cola said. The spot, with 30-second and 90-second versions, will also be split into multiple 15- and 6-second spots that more directly highlight individual Coca-Cola brands.

The programmatic approach reflects Coke’s changing advertising posture, eschewing big platforms of awareness-based advertising, such as linear TV, and instead focusing on storytelling, custom delivered to the right audiences, Moin said. Digital now accounts for more than 60% of the company’s global marketing spending, up from less than 30% in 2019, Coca-Cola Co. CEO James Quincey said in October during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. Coca-Cola’s third-quarter net revenue rose 8%, to $12 billion.

The ads have revolving taglines. The 30- and 90-second versions close with “Proud sponsors of what matters most,” while cutdowns identify the company as proud sponsors of “smart plays,” “keeping your cool,” and “the new guy.”

But those are only the beginning. With an eye on making its message as flexible as possible, Ames said Coca-Cola would have nearly 40,000 pieces of creative content for the campaign. “My team is working hard on making [content] that allows us to customize the product, the imagery and the messaging through programmatic buying,” Ames said.

Coca-Cola’s ongoing work to develop artificial intelligence capabilities could make such efforts “super efficient,” said Moin.

More on how Coke is approaching AI

“Proud sponsors of ‘blank’ allows us to have this unifying idea that can stretch to the moments that matter most for consumers and our system, to make sure that a company of our size, that matters to so many people, has that flexibility,” Ames added.

The approach is reminiscent of the creative direction taken by Coors Light of late, which has involved pitching the Molson Coors-owned brew as everything from “the official beer of free A/C” to the “official beer of pregame naps.”

Renewed passion

Coke executives are also hopeful “The New Guy” will pay off in retail, where Coke bottlers are set to support the message with displays. Moin called point-of-purchase merchandising a “renewed passion” for the company.

Fanta’s small moment in the commercial spotlight, for example, should reflect a similar place in retail store displays, said Moin.

Read more: Fanta got a new playful look in 2023

“I would hope that moment would create great memories with Fanta fans and fanatics. But now, because of this, when our bottling system puts displays in retail stores, you will see Fanta,” Moin said. “Generally we wouldn’t do that; it would be a big Coke display. Apart from Coke, you will see Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Fairlife and Fanta. That’s where the response of the brand happens, not only from memory creation in the ad, but from the shoppers who are going to see it more than what they would have seen, for example, in January of [2023].”

‘The Bear’

Coca-Cola had a previous association with “The Bear” through product placement in its episodes. The brand connected to Storer through the production company Smuggler, and shot in Chicago shortly after the Hollywood strikes were settled. The ad was shot using camera lenses that had only been used for “The Bear,” Ames said.

According to Moin, “The New Guy” demonstrated to Coke’s creative teams the importance of a message entrenched in culture.

“What I love about this work is the exceptional craft,” said Moin. “The craft that Chris has brought into it comes from cultural connectivity, more than just a story passed on to a good director.”

“My goal with this film was to make something that people wanted to watch, and people would share,” added Ames. “And I’m a big believer that if you’ve made something great enough, you can outkick your media plan.”

With budgets limited and the need to improve efficiency, Moin said portfolio advertising could become an important piece of Coca-Cola’s mix in the future.

“We should be able to visualize now similar approaches at least multiple times a year,” Moin said. “We still believe that there are moments when you’ve got to talk about the singular brand, whether it’s Coke or Sprite or Bodyarmor. But there should be multiple moments where we should be able to lead with our family of brands. And that could be massively game-changing for us.”