INSIGHTS, STRATEGY, IDEAThe prize was a rare thing: a set of commemorate Coca-Cola bottles designed to celebrate the brand’s 125th anniversary.Our campaign was a rarer thing: a smartphone app that engaged a diverse group of consumers, and engaged them for more than just the first day.The Coke Collector app set you on a multi-media race to collect a “virtual” set of the 12 bottles, combining augmented-reality and location-based technologies with escalating promotions and prizes.For the “Coke fan”: “virtual” bottles for you to collect and boast about, and a real-life prize to covet.For the “regular Coke drinker”: an app whose cutting-edge technology was worth talking about.For the “brand agnostic”: a game that made Coke stand out at the point of sale, plus promotions to make you choose our brand.One app for all.CREATIVE EXECUTIONWe created the app in partnership with 7-Eleven, the retail chain that is the biggest convenient store channel in Taiwan. When players took a picture of a 7-Eleven store sign, we would send them a “virtual” Coke bottle in one of the 12 designs. Players would compete to be the first to collect all 12, and along the way they could unlock special promotional offers for use in 7-Eleven stores.

The Coke Collector had numerous clever little design features. These included using the motion-sensing capabilities of smartphones so that when you received your “virtual” bottle, you shook your phone to get the bottle to fizz open, releasing the promotional offers inside.We integrated the app with Facebook so that information would appear on players’ Facebook Wall, creating competition to see who could collect the most bottles. Friends could follow each others’ ranking in the contest.RESULTSA majority of branded apps – 70 percent – engage their users for just a single day.The Coke Collector kept users engaged for up to a month, an unprecedented amount of time.Almost 14,000 people downloaded the app, and they collected 500,000 bottles over the life of the campaign. Even after 25 days, the number of collected bottles was running at more than 1,000 per day.The campaign won three Taiwan App Next Awards, including the Best App in 2011.