Coke's best summer Ad campaigns

Sharing an icy-cold Coke with mates on a hot summers day is one of life’s greatest pleasures, so it’s no surprise that Coca‑Cola captures that little slice of perfection with each new summer ad campaign.

And if you’ve got a telly chances are you’ve seen a Coke ad. You may even have a sneaky favourite.

We take a look at some of the most memorable summer campaigns from here and around the world.

Share a Coke

Go to the shops find your name (or one of your mates’ names) on a Coke bottle or can and enjoy. Sounds easy? It was.

The Share a Coke campaign began in 2011, right here in Australia. It went on the capture attention around the world, including The United Kingdom, China and the USA.

The idea was simple – put 150 of Australia’s most popular names on the front of millions of Coca‑Cola bottles.

The campaign started a frenzy. Aussies scrambled to find their friends names, lined up for hours to get names printed on mini cans and sparked social media conversations that took the message international.

It was the first time in it’s 125-year history that Coca‑Cola had made such a major change to their packaging, and the impact was huge.

Colours of Summer

Another change to the packaging came in the summer of 2014, when Coca‑Colaadded five limited edition coloured cans to their classic Coke red, offering a rainbow of choice in fridges around the country.

The Colours of Summer were available in blue, lime green, pink, purple and orange 250ml cans and were a bold statement of self-expression, wrapped up in some colourful summer packaging.   

Coke Come Alive

What do Troye Sivan, Cody Simpson, Tigerlily, and colour-changing labels all have in common? Aside from being awesome, they all played a big part in Coca‑Cola’s Coke Come Alive campaign, which turned up the heat in the summer of 2015. 

Thanks to a partnership with Universal Music, fans were able to win access to a series of unique events and experiences across the summer, while watching their favourite soft drink labels come to life through a unique thermo ink technology that changes colour at different temperatures.  

“Out of the fridge, when the drinks are at room temperature, the packaging will look as normal,” says Danielle Johnson, Marketing Communications Consultant, Coca‑Cola South Pacific. “But once they’re chilled, that’s when they come alive.

“There’s nothing like a cool, refreshing drink on a hot summer’s day, so we set the point of colour change to reflect this optimal state of consumption.” says Danielle.

Epic Summer

For most of us, summer is the longest holiday of the year, a time for hanging out with mates and making epic memories that last a lifetime. With that thought front of mind, Coca‑Cola set out to create the 2018 Epic Summer campaign.

Great memories are the result of great opportunities, so it was important that the Epic Summer prizes live up to those expectations, and they absolutely did.

Winners could choose five of their closest friends, and gain exclusive access to events like a Sydney music festival, flying to the Gold Coast for a weekend of theme park thrills, adventure getaways, attending private moonlight movie screenings or exclusive concerts.

Bragging rights? Naturally. But even better, it’s all for sharing with your friends.

With a history of campaigns this good, the bar for the Summer of 2019 has been set pretty high.

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