Dive Brief:
- Coca-Cola is promoting its Coke Summer Music events with an augmented reality (AR) experience on photo-messaging app Snapchat. The AR content features Australian rapper The Kid Laroi performing a new song titled “Thousand Miles,” per information shared with Marketing Dive.
- Snapchat users in the United States and Canada can find Coke’s AR content in the app’s Lens Carousel. It opens a smartphone’s front-facing camera to show a live selfie surrounded by Coke’s red dots as Kid Laroi’s song plays in the background. After a five-second countdown, the lens flips to the rear-facing camera, showing an AR performance of Kid Laroi against a virtual backdrop.
- The AR experience includes hidden Easter eggs for fans to discover as they watch the content on their mobile devices. In addition to the Lens Carousel, the AR experience is available by scanning billboards in New York and Chicago, visiting Coke Studio’s website or scanning a Snapcode.
Dive Insight:
Coca-Cola seeks to engage a target audience of younger consumers with its AR experience promoting Coke Summer Music events. AR Lenses are one of the most popular features on Snapchat, as parent company Snap has touted. More than 250 million of Snapchat’s users engage with AR content every day, a significant part of its daily active user (DAU) base of 332 million, per information shared by the company.
As Snapchat users share photos in messages and in Stories, its AR Lenses generate an average of six billion plays every day. Snapchat also has broad mobile reach among Gen Z and millennials in several countries, connecting with 75% of people ages 13 to 34 in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Australia and the Netherlands, according to Snap. Those demographics partly match beverage consumption habits. In the U.S., soft drinks make up 22% of total beverage consumption among people ages 12 to 19, making soft drinks more popular than milk, juice and other beverages among that age group, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Coke’s summer campaign comes as the company sees stronger demand for its products despite raising prices because of inflationary pressures. The company’s organic revenue expanded 18% during the first quarter of the year, according to its most recent earnings report. The company hasn’t surpassed 2019 volumes in restaurants, amid closures caused by the pandemic. However, it is seeing a rebound in sales through movie theaters and stadiums as many people gather in public spaces again.
Coke has been active with campaigns aimed at younger consumers, including the release of its “pixel-flavored” soda that plays off the popularity of video games among teens and preteens. Its limited-edition Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Byte was formulated to evoke the flavor of pixels. As part of its promotion for the soft drink, Coke teamed with gaming organization PWR on a Pixel Point Island in Fortnite where visitors can hunt for hidden treasures, play mini-games and participate in other activities.
