Relaunching Coca-Cola into UK football

The brand was losing its cultural relevance

Coca-Cola is one of the most famous logos in the world. For over 100 years, it has held a place in hearts and minds across the globe. Recently, however, the brand had been losing out on value share to PepsiCo and declining in cultural relevance, with brand love scores down by 12%.

To combat this, Coca-Cola invested in a three-year sponsorship of one of Britain’s greatest loves: the Premier League.

We were tasked with developing a bold and distinctive creative platform for the sponsorship; one that would cut through the clutter of other big name sponsors and regain Coca-Cola’s cultural leadership.

How we made change

We immediately saw the synergies between between the Premier League (the most popular league) and Coca-Cola (the most popular drink after water). Both felt big, collective and diverse, bringing together unlikely people to share in something great. Looking at both the brand and the league, it was easy to see that all the differences they encompass created something magical.

That’s when we hit upon the idea of ‘We’. When fans talk about their teams they say ‘we played well today’, as if they themselves were part of the game. This chimed well with the democracy and accessibility of the Coca-Cola brand, leading us to the idea.

Creative and Delivery

Where Everyone Plays became our creative platform: a celebration of the fans, players, grounds staff and stewards that make the Premier League so special.

To live up to our ambition of regaining cultural leadership, we knew we had to go big in media. We launched with a 90” TVC in prime time TV, telling the stories of the fans from all 20 clubs, set to ‘Only You’ by Yazoo.

The TVC set our ambition for the partnership but we didn’t stop there. Implemented through ‘Where Everyone Plays’, we tackled barriers within the sport – including access to training and safe pitches in underprivileged areas, and homophobia within the game – striving for a genuine level playing field where everyone can play.

Our programme of brand activity ran across all communications: from match day events and promotions, to on-pack and grass-roots activation, social, PR & influencer marketing.

Results

• Brand love scores increased by 2.7%
• Increased sales including volume by 3.1% and value by 18.6%
• 1.1B circulation and reach of all campaign coverage
• 27M combined reach of celebrity and influencer launch event attendees
• 6.4M reach of campaign hashtag #WhereEveryonePlays