Our audience was moving away from traditional media to mobile devices. Especially in our region which has the highest mobile penetration in the world. This became a challenge for Coca-Cola in order to reach and engage its audience.
Results
Every month, the world spends 4 million years online. And with 1.5 billion smart phone users worldwide, it’s clear the internet is now accessed anywhere, not just at home. 18-34 year olds check their phone every 9 minutes and feel naked when leaving the house without it. This addiction is leading to a society that is less and less capable of living in the moment. Coca-Cola wanted to remind the world about something beautiful, which we have almost forgotten about: an undistracted, real moment shared with family and friends. To solve this quite absurd behavioral problem, we created a solution of similar nature: The Social Media Guard. It takes the social out of media and puts it back into life. A quirky device that prevents you from using your phone when you’re with someone else and a reminder for everyone to be more present in the moment. We launched the Social Media Guard with a film and we wanted to catch our audience in the act with the film: 40% of all viewers saw it on a mobile device which turned the viewing experience into an intervention; our message became much more impactful that way. And it engaged them to share their thoughts immediately with friends on their social platforms, which turned into big social debate online and eventually offline. The Social Media Guard was not just a tool to be used, it was a communication strategy to wake people up and get them talking about a pressing sociological problem. The role of Coca-Cola as the custodian for happiness integrated seamlessly and strengthened the emotional connection with its audience.
We launched the film on Youtube and seeded it on a view blogs by simply writing them. From there on it was up to our audience to spread it. Considering we caught them in the act (40% of our audience saw the film on a mobile device) we knew that we would encounter a high engagement. It spread virally from there on.
Over night, the film made Youtube’s front page and stayed there for days. It was viewed over 8,300,000 times in every country in the world and was even shown in full length on Chinese National TV. It is already in the Top 5 most successful Coca-Cola commercials of all time on Youtube. The Social Media Guard became a phenomenon online (over 19,000 posts) and in global news (TIME, CNN, The Guardian, Mashable, Huffington Post...) generating a total of 2.65 billion unpaid media impressions. With 97% favorable sentiment on Facebook (415,000 shares) and twitter (45,600,000 impressions, even Guy Kawasaki tweeted), it got people closer to the brand and made them remember the importance of shared real-life moments in our search for true happiness. It even sparked a deeper change with a 40% increase of google searches for “social media addiction” (vs. previous months, 48% increase vs. same months last year).