Coca Cola is replacing its long-running ad campaign, ‘Open Happiness’ with a new global campaign, ‘Taste the Feeling’ that supposedly makes the transition from a high profile idealistic position to a simpler and more contemporary approach that tries to scale social barriers. The new ad campaign comprising a number of ad spots, carry the same message conveying inclusiveness and harmony in diversity.
The ads of the ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign are designed for a global audience with simple stories from everyday life and hardly have any dialogue. The themes have different meanings for different parts of the world, although the underlying message is the same in all – Coca Cola brings people across races, sexes and classes, closer. In the new ‘Taste the Feeling’ campaign, one of the ads, titled ‘Pool Boy’ shows an entire family lusting for one individual, in this case, a young man cleaning their swimming pool. Made with the idea of diversity and inclusion in the LGBT community, the ad has siblings, sister and brother eying the Pool Boy before they set out on a mad rush to get a coke for him only to find that their mother had already reached him not just with a Coke but a sandwich as well.
One ad titled, ‘Elevator’ has a rap star and a hotel steward stuck in an elevator following a power failure and make good use of the time dancing with Coke. Another ad titled ‘Subway’ has a music company executive finding what appeared to be a great talent to be nurtured as he stopped over for a Coke. There are other ads in the campaign made to fit different cultures.This transition coincided with major changes taking place in Coca Cola’s global marketing team; Wendy Clark, the high profile senior vice president, marketing communications, quit in 2016, a year after Joe Tripodi quit as CMO. Clark worked closely with Tripodi to run the “Open Happiness’ campaign, which was cruising till he quit and was succeeded by Marcos De Quinto who had different ideas. However, it was not until Rodolfo Echeverria, VP, Global Active Lifestyle took over the responsibility of providing creative direction to the transition from ‘Open Happiness’ to ‘Taste the Feeling.’