People walk past hundreds, if not thousands, of OOH ads every day. We don’t even notice most of them, ignore some of them, and get annoyed at the rest for distracting us from our phones.

The truth is, billboards are everywhere. And for a brand like Coca-Cola, they’re a critical tactic to gently nudge people towards purchase during their daily commute, shopping trips, leisure activities, and everything in between.

Our brief: Overcome billboard blindness.

Everyone already recognizes our iconic bottle, and just putting it on a poster was no longer enough. We needed to reignite this traditional medium by pushing beyond mere messaging and giving something back to everyday consumers.

Our objective was to get people engaged and sample Coca-Cola Zero Sugar. With thousands of shares on social and even more Cokes sampled (we had to get more!): Mission accomplished.

TikTok taught us how easy and fun it is to play with content: change outfits in a jump, smashcut into full makeup, or drag and drop friends into new environments.

By comparison, OOH feels stuck in the past. Look at any billboard and ask: Where’s the joy? The playfulness? Of course people have billboard blindness, there’s no reason to take notice.

To catch people's attention, we gave them something to catch. Literally.

#CatchTheCoke is a first-of-its-kind OOH.

In three cities, we put a moving bottle of Coke on a billboard, randomized its path, and invited people to catch it with their hands.

Catch it. Post it. Drink it. As simple as that.

Except there’s one problem... Our iconic bottle isn’t easily caught.

If they succeeded and shared on social, we rewarded them with a free Coke. And even if they failed, we guaranteed a laugh.

“Doing it for the gram” is done. Pushing up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, basic. Even seeing yourself on a Times Square billboard hasn’t been cool since 2014.

People don’t just want to photograph the world, they want to play with it. So that’s what we gave them.

#CatchTheCoke turned billboards into more than mere advertising. We didn’t ask people to notice us, we created a moment for them to join in on the magic.

OOH was the perfect channel to bring this to life. It’s a medium for everyone, and that’s exactly who Coca-Cola is for. As it becomes increasingly difficult to grab attention— especially of Gen Z—we found a way to stand out in the visual jungle that our cities have become.

By encouraging people to catch our iconic bottle and seed it online, we became a platform for creating memories, sparking imagination, and catapulting connections.

First, we created an unmissable new city attraction.

We put #CatchTheCoke on the largest digital OOH in Milan, Madrid and Bucharest that we could get our hands on. One screen. One day. Only the highest traffic areas.

Then we turned a billboard into a giant hit of dopamine.

We made the bottle “not so easy” to catch, but not so hard that you’d give up. People found unconventional ways to track the bottle and catch the bottle; some even mimicked others. And when each person caught the Coke, everyone celebrated.

We got participants to spread the word for us.

To get a free Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, participants shared their “Catch” on social, creating thousands of actually super funny posts in the process.

And of course influencers helped spread the Magic.

Local influencers invited their community to join the fun, ensuring that everyone had the chance to play.

So many people participated that we ran out of Cokes to give away.

We didn’t just get people to see our billboard, we got them to stop and play. Average time spent playing our interactive game was 3 minutes and 37 seconds. That’s 3 minutes and 36 seconds longer than average DOOH dwell time of 0.7-0.9 seconds1. Unbelievably, that’s 241x longer than average!

Over 5,000 people successfully Caught the Coke. We actually ran out of cans and had to run to a local shop to buy more!

Each successful catch (and many of the unsuccessful ones) turned into a social post. We turned one billboard in the streets into thousands online. It’s as if all the OOH of these three cities had been displaying our ad.

We broke through billboard blindness. We sparked joy among participants. And we even gave out more Cokes than we brought to the activation!