The booths brought workers a few minutes of happiness sourced directly from Coca-Cola, therefore increasing affinity and love for the brand. Installed across the UAE, they logged over 140,000 minutes, while the online video took the activation even further with over 3 million views, 14,000 tweets, 45,000 shares and 67,000 likes.
In addition, over 820 million media impressions and an estimated PR value of 1.5 million dollars helped contribute to a 13.55% increase in brand love, with 6.7% more weekly drinkers amongst South Asians in the UAE.
Source: Coke Continuous Consumer Tracker 2014 & MEMAC Ogilvy PR (approved by MEPRA).
Creative Execution
We created and installed phone booths that accept Coca-Cola bottle caps instead of coins at labour camps across the UAE, enabling poor workers to make a free 3-minute international phone call home. The activation was also filmed and shared in an online video, spreading it across multiple channels and consumer segments in addition to our initial target.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea
In the Middle East, Coca-Cola is still competing for the position of market leader. That’s why, in 2014, we set out to increase brand love amongst one of the UAE’s largest consumer segments – South Asians. In a segment usually only targeted with basic freebies and generic prizes, we had to tap into an insight that our target could truly relate to.
We found that majority of the consumer segment was made up of blue collar workers who leave their families back home and come to the country to work for a better future – often on extremely low wages. With high calling rates, workers had to limit their phone calls home. So we created a way to help connect them with their families more often.