For marketers, Q1 is Super Bowl season. It presents the biggest opportunity of the year for the biggest brands in the world.

Every year, Pepsi goes big for the Super Bowl. Which means every year, The Coca-Cola Company kicks off Q1 taking a back seat and ceding ground to our biggest competitor.

In 2024, it was time to break the cycle of Coca-Cola losing Q1. But without the help of a Super Bowl sponsorship.

The ask was to drive increased purchase intent for not just classic Coke, but the Coke portfolio of products.

But each of these brands has its own distinct strategy, voice and iconography. And more importantly, consumers buy products they like, not caring if they’re “related” under one corporate umbrella.

How do we increase sales and sentiment for the Coke FAMILY OF PRODUCTS without undermining, minimizing or bastardizing each individual brand?

To tell the FIRST-EVER story of the Coca-Cola family of products (believe it or not), we partnered with culture’s top authority on family dynamics: Christopher Storer, creator and director of the Emmy-winning comedy series, ‘The Bear.’

In partnership with Storer and the entire production crew of ‘The Bear,’ we created ‘New Guy,’ an original film positioning the Coca-Cola portfolio as:

“The perfect family of drinks for all our imperfect families.”

“New Guy” is a 3-minute film about a guy showing up to what may or may not be a Super Bowl party to meet his girlfriend’s family for the first time. With the Coke family of products weaved seamlessly through the storyline.

This film shows audiences a modern, unexpected side of Coke: comedically chaotic, imperfect, vulnerable.

With so much seasonal focus and dollars going toward the action on the field, we turned our attention to the more human moments.

For our millennial target, Coca-Cola products play a central role in the real life that surrounds the cultural moment of Super Bowl – the beverages they most often select by their side when enjoying sports, attending gatherings and entertaining guests.

This was our unlock – Any brand can buy its way into a consumer's life, but earning a role in the moments that really matter is something to truly be proud of.

Our Strategy: Proud Sponsors of What Matters Most

Coke doesn’t sponsor a football game one day February.

We sponsor you and the moments that matter most to you, every day.

It’s a unique experience holding callbacks in the midst of the SAG and WGA strike. Due to the timing, this process gave working actors, mostly Second City vets, the chance to not only work a paying job, but work for one of TV’s hottest creators. Many of the cast had already worked with Storer and his crew on The Bear in various bit parts, all adding to the “family reunion” feeling that permeated the set. In the end, the team gathered a cast of seasoned improvisers, mostly Chicago natives, that together created an authentic and believable family to match The Coca-Cola Company’s family of products.

In the pursuit of depicting an authentically imperfect family, we wanted to make something that didn’t look or feel like a category commercial. We gave one of TV’s biggest directors the license to do what he does best, and allowed our actors the freedom to improvise and go off-script. Anything to make us emulate real life.

Visually, we displayed products in a more naturalistic way, prioritizing realism over perfectionism — even spilling a bottle of Coke on camera.

This tonality shift reached our intended audience. To date, the campaign brought an 11% increase in purchase intent, 14% increase in brand perception (both lifts across the massive Coca-Cola portfolio) and has earned over 2 billion impressions and 70 articles. It’s the top performing portfolio campaign of its kind in the history of The Coca-Cola Company, setting a new standard for one of the best marketing brands to ever do it.