Brief: Build the association of Coca-Cola with Italian meals, overcoming cultural barriers and traditional habits.Challenge: We are in Italy, where food and cooking are felt in a unique way. Home-cooked meals are generally associated to wine and water, while Coca-Cola is usually associated with special and out-of-home occasions. A perception that couldn’t be challenged by an ordinary TV campaign aired little longer than a month.Insight: There’s an opportunity for Coca-Cola to infiltrate and gain a firm foothold in the everyday life of Italians, and gain relevant exposure for much longer than paid-for OTS’: the merchandising of Coca-Cola. Since their early years, the Coca-Cola ads have been the subject of a wide variety of objects, such as trays or calendars, found in bars, flea markets, or in our homes: but none of these places Coca-Cola in the context of an Italian family meal.

Merchandising has delivered as a broadcast-level medium. Platmats, postcards, calendars and posters have yielded over 160 Million impressions in a year, with a total reach safely over 60% of All Adults, at no additional cost. TV would have generated the same level of exposure in two weeks, but at an incremental cost of about 1 Million Euro’s.

We have redrawn the image of Coca-Cola, for the first time on the setting of an Italian table with a vintage flavor. The activity leveraged an asset which was already in place (the vintage merchandising line), only making it consistent with local brand objectives.

The new setting was the basis for a massive production of merchandising which have become, quite spontaneously, the backbone medium of our campaign: these originated what we came to call ‘Kitchen GRP’s’, a continuous visibility in consumers’ home at no additional cost.