Bollywood based music and content monopolise the Indian media scene stifling all other forms of content other than news and reality shows. Film production houses ensure that non-Bollywood music/content did not get airplay in order to ensure their dominance on revenues.

Looking through the perspective of advertisers- high advertising clutter and diminishing bang-for-the-buck is a reality. Branded-content has become a me-too and an over-used media opportunity.

Coca-Cola faced a unique problem in India –high brand-awareness but the youth didn’t demonstrate ‘love’ for the brand. The dire need was to build a mass-media based opportunity with the power to viral across youth touch-points thereby expanding the Coca-Cola ‘Open-Happiness’ message within their peer-group. While ‘branded-content’ answered the requirement, it was imperative to build it around a strong brand-centric idea.

Also, the growth in the digitally connected Indian youth was an opportunity for distributing content over a larger connected audience with a large potential to engage and bring them into the fold of the brand. Therefore, Coke Studio was conceived as a music based programme that would showcase musicians from diverse talent and expertise, all collaborating to create new sounds over a Coke.

Bollywood comprised the majority of music consumed by youth, they also dabble in international, devotional, regional/vernacular and Indian-Classical. Their deep need is to ‘discover’ new sounds and be the first to ‘share’ within the peer group. We collaborated with 8 music-producers and 265-artistes to arrive at a melodious mix of contemporary with classical, international with traditional, to build a catalogue of ‘fusion music’ that was modern in its presentation while being rooted in Indian culture. We ensured that the music was made available to be consumed and shared across mass and personal media vehicles preferred by the Indian youth.

Coke Studio exceeded expectations in the spread of content beyond television and the engagement seen amongst Indian Youth. The music had clearly hit the sweet-spot of what the youth were looking for and in the connect they built with the Coca-Cola brand. The numbers tell the story well:

• 62m youth reached through Television!

• 7.8m reach through radio simulcasts and airplay

• 1.78m fans on Facebook with an average engagement at 12% over the season

• 10.8m views on YouTube

• 4600+ followers on Twitter, 10500+ mentions leading to 280Mn impressions over the season

• 0.5m Facebook fans engaged with through RFID tag based activity at concerts

• 208,000 unique visitors to the website + 36,000 on the mobi-site

• 12m+ downloads through Blu-Fi

• 1.23m music streams across 4 web/mobile based portals

• 20,000CDs sold–making this the largest non-film album

• 12% increase in brand love;9% more would like to be seen drinking the brand

• Appreciable impact on Brand scores

• Brand preference grew 0.1% while P4W grew 0.4%

• Volumes grew too – 33.2% increase in volumes (2013vs2012)