Building association between meals and Coca-Cola has long been one of the key drivers for getting more people reaching for a Coca-Cola each week.

For 2024, we needed to double down on being front of mind at ‘consumption occasions’. The goal was to build positive association between meals and Coca-Cola, and drive engagement around the culture of eating out. When people were thinking about eating out, we wanted them to think Coca-Cola too.

Social media feeds have redefined a generation’s relationship with eating out: From restaurant plates flooding Instagram’s top-down design aesthetic to pop-up trends and messy snacking on TikTok. Food has been transformed by social from functional fuel to the passionate pursuit of upcoming and nostalgic trends.

We knew to carry on building our association with meals we needed an idea which could infiltrate this world and become part of our audience’s system of influence.

Influence isn’t just Taylor Swift. Past icons have modern presence. Like in 1957, when Marilyn Monroe ate a hot dog with a Coca-Cola in Manhattan. This is a Foodmark: Landmarks for famous meal moments. They combine three ingredients: an iconic moment, a meal, and a Coca-Cola.

There are thousands of photos capturing moments like this. We turned the locations of these iconic images into real landmarks with participatory experiences.

• Eat a hot dog where Marilyn did in NYC in 1957.

• Enjoy pizza at Cazuza's favorite restaurant in Rio from the 80s during a live tribute show.

• Visit a movie set based on a Raj Kapoor film inside his favorite restaurant.

• Recreate a scene from the Hong Kong film, The God of Cookery.

All with a Coca-Cola.

Influencers created 1500+ additional Foodmarks, each serving unique meal experiences with Coca-Cola, discoverable through an interactive map from Time Out.

Our target audience? Moment Makers: Connected Gen-Z & Millennials whose focus is what's hot. Their needs have shifted from food for function to a desire for food experiences.

Social is the cornerstone for these new experiences. They look to influencers for inspiration for their next meal; their feeds are where they can become the stars of their own story.

Coca-Cola wanted to lead food culture and elevate the meal experience of people all over the world.

The campaign was planned with food influence at the centre – building immersive experiences; partnering with hundreds of creators; and collaborating on a web platform with the default partner for restaurant recommendations in key cities, Time Out.

Our approach was to inspire the world’s next food experiences with iconic food influencers unlocking the opportunity for fans to recreate iconic food and Coca-Cola moments for themselves, celebrating the inextricable link between Coca-Cola and meals.

How did we make Marilyn Monroe Coca-Cola’s newest food influencer? We started with a photo: Of the icon herself eating a hot dog at a food cart in 1957. Then, we posted it to social and OOH across NYC. Each image drove to an event at the same location the photograph was taken. The experience recreated Marilyn’s 1957 New York City through an immersive physical space, metahuman tech, music, dance, and food.

New Yorkers flooded the event, and Marilyn earned millions of impressions and primetime spots in the media, just like she did in the 50s. The location became the city’s newest landmark, or as we call it a Foodmark.

But we didn’t stop there. We made three more of the biggest icons to ever live, food influencers in our biggest markets. Each with their own event, drawing in thousands and resulting in billions of impressions.

We built a positive association between meals and Coca-Cola driving engagement around the culture of eating out.

1500+ Foodmarks were created in one month resulting in 2 billion+ impressions with 99% positive sentiment in North America. Hong Kong saw +15% increase in net sales revenue for food and drink channel. TimeOut saw 1.4 million visits. Foodmarks became the #3 trending topic in Brazil. 812 PR placements went live. Content saw thousands of engagements created by 500+ influencers, with engagement rates up to 4.5%.

Preliminary results show that the Meals Occasion share has increased by .4% (vs - .1% competitors), reflecting over $2B estimated market value. Latam +3.7% (vs +.3% competitors) NA +.7% (vs +.3% competitors). In US, YouGov BrandIndex data showed average buzz at 18.9, average attention at 29.3, and average purchase intent at 14.7. A year-on-year gain of 4.7% for buzz, 5.8% for attention, and 2.5 for purchase intent.