Coca-Cola invites Gen Z to ‘Catch the Coke’ on digital billboards across Europe

We’ve been seeing a ton of out-of-home advertising from Coca-Cola lately, from VML’s campaign featuring unauthorized street paintings of the Coke logo to Ogilvy New York’s crushed-can “Recycle Me” ads rolling out in Latin America. Here’s yet another OOH effort from the soda giant, this time from Europe, where digital ads from Ogilvy Paris feature a bouncing Coke bottle and invite passersby to #CatchTheCoke. The interactive “Magic Catch” boards were inspired by the long tradition of so-called “forced perspective” photography, which uses an optical illusion to make an object appear smaller than it actually is. Tourists at landmarks often use the technique, such as this photo of a man “holding up” the Leaning Tower of Pisa. On the Coke ads, the bouncing bottle makes it challenging to get exactly the right photo of yourself “catching” it in a still image. Below is a video of Romanian influencer Lorena Visan goofing around in front of one of the boards. The goal of the campaign is to have the billboards stand out in the cityscapes where they’re located, and boost social sharing of them through the gameification element. A major challenge for the creative team was making the game not too hard but also not too easy—finding that sweet spot of fun rather than frustration. “Engaging with a digitally absorbed Gen Z audience on the streets is increasingly challenging, the onus is on us/brands to continually innovate and create an unmissable presence,” said Islam ElDessouky, global VP of creative strategy and content at Coca-Cola. “Our latest executions were focused on ‘value exchange.’ OOH is an accessible traditional medium and it’s for everyone, just like Coca-Cola, but what are people really experiencing from our brand when it’s on the streets?”

Coca-Cola invites Gen Z to ‘Catch the Coke’ on digital billboards across Europe

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