Why Coca-Cola Is Celebrating Local Sellers' Wonderfully Wonky Takes on an Icon

Islam ElDessouky is very particular about the hyphen in Coca-Cola. People always miss it out and, he sighs, spelling checkers don’t even highlight it. But for Islam, who is global vice president at the drinks giant, it’s the very heart of the brand. 

“When we say inclusion and when we say connection, I always push people on the importance of the hyphen in Coca-Cola. I’m like: that’s the connector… our brand is not exclusive, it’s not individualistic,” he says, describing himself as a ‘hardcore guideline person’.

Having spent 18 years at the Coca-Cola Company, Islam is fully entangled at a quantum level with the brand. He takes everything about the brand guidelines very seriously - the particular shade of red, the florid spencerian script and, yes, the hyphen. Coca-Cola’s global dominance is thanks to people like Islam who have stewarded the brand for over a hundred years.

So the latest campaign from the brand has been an interesting, occasionally uncomfortable - but ultimately rewarding - exercise. ‘Every Coca-Cola Is Welcome’ celebrates small ‘mom and pop’ shops and street food vendors around the world who sell Coca-Cola products and advertise the fact with their own hand-painted street art and signs.

It’s a campaign that’s rooted in the inclusive spirit and universality of Coca-Cola, and after a run of very high tech, AI-forward campaigns and projects, this is a very homespun and analogue exploration of some very human truths about the brand.

The idea initially arose almost incidentally in a conversation with WPP’s OpenX platform, specifically, agency VML. All they had was a rough sketch of an idea - a couple of sentences really - but it immediately grabbed the Coca-Cola team because of its resonance with core Coca-Cola values and what it says about people’s relationship with the brand.

“There are two values that are super solid in the brand foundation. One is inclusion - I think Coca-Cola prides itself on being for everyone. [It’s even in] the tagline, ‘Every Coca-Cola Is Welcome’, that’s the meaning of it, we are for everyone. We welcome everyone as long as the intent is pure and clean and good…. So that is value number one - and we found that this is very inclusive as a piece of work. The second value is authenticity,” explains Islam. He flags one South African seller who is featured in the campaign who is convinced that his hand-drawn version of the logo is identical to the original. “It’s cute, it’s heartwarming. That’s how proud they were with those pieces of art. They do not intend to make them not look like Coke, I think they put their best effort to represent this brand through their eyes and lenses.”

Add to that the uplifting, irresistible joy of the idea and it hits the Coca-Cola trifecta.

Bringing it all to life has been, says Islam, a ‘labour of love’. From that first initial spark in August last year it’s been a good seven months of work; an iterative and exploratory creative journey. And while the campaign has launched with a centrepiece billboard in New York’s Times Square, the project originally began life on a much smaller scale. 

Coca-Cola works as a ‘networked organisation’ and it’s no longer the case that a local campaign ‘goes global’ but, rather, people from across the markets share and collaborate on creative ideas, not forced in a top-down way. Instead the Latin America team put their hands up to have a go at a pilot, and as they started to uncover stories and images from wonderful local small businesses, other markets started to get excited and join in, from Southeast Asia to South Africa and soon they had a worldwide celebration on their hands and the North America team proposed sending it's to Time Square.

“You’d get one positive comment after the other and it was like a Mexican wave in a stadium. One person raises their hand and stands up, and then it becomes contagious and then you find yourself in a big Mexican wave in the entire stadium,” says Islam. So, I think this is just the beginning.”

Across the world, the team uncovered funny, touching stories from small business owners, including one from India who had painted on her shop front a picture in honour of her father, who would start each day with a Coca-Cola. Of course, says Islam, not everyone they found wanted to appear on camera and so the stories and signage shared in the campaign is just a fraction of a wider trend and truth. Everyone who did feature also received a personalised, one-of-a-kind can of Coke bearing their unique take on the logo.

For all the fun and obvious thrill that this campaign gave the team, as they got to collate stories of men and women around the world who sell Coca-Cola products, this campaign involved walking a fine line, which was tricky for Islam.

“To be very honest, brands are built on standards, guidelines and consistency. [For] Coca-Cola, whether as a product or a brand or even as a stock, the consistent promise that it delivers has been one of its key success factors,” says Islam. “So yes, we’re very positive and feeling super human and embracing all of those versions that are out there. But at the same time it doesn’t mean that we’re saying ‘bye guidelines, bye consistency, just do as you please, guys’. No, that’s not the case at all. We’ve still got to push for our guidelines, we’ve still got to push for our red colour, for our spencerian, because that’s what defines us. But, at the same time, from a human perspective, we just wanted to embrace those mom-and-pops out there.”

The project is a fascinating example of a huge, global corporation operating at a human level, using common sense and nuance to parse out the difference between bad faith infringement of its assets, nefarious misuse of the brand and ordinary people who are champions of the brand. “These are places and people who are proud to be selling our products and portfolio and whatnot, and to the best of their street ability, showing their pride in being associated with us,” says Islam.

“The message is that we see the imperfection and what was created and we saw beyond the imperfection. We saw beyond that imperfect visualisation of who we are; we saw, actually, what we really mean to people.”

For Islam, this campaign - which certainly isn’t the biggest budget campaign that Coca-Cola has ever created - has been enriching in other ways. As much as he is wedded, heart and soul to the brand guidelines, through these wonky, handmade tributes he’s also seen the brand through others’ eyes.

“It is definitely inspiring, because when you say you want your brand to be in culture and touching people’s lives… this is it! And when you say, ‘we want people to engage with us and share your work and create user-generated content - this is the biggest offline user generated content ever. This is a full network of moms and pops around the world creating user-generated content of how they love and manifest the brand.”