Spread The Cheer

All of us have managed to escape the uncomfortable event of adding our parents as friends on social networking sites. But can one escape the conversation when a glistening bottle of Coca-Cola is placed as a bait? Banking on the predictable outcome, the adorably sly father, played by Ashish Vidyarthi, finds a way into getting his friend request accepted by his son in exchange for a bottle of Coca-Cola without uttering a single word, only to marvel at his son’s embarrassing posts.

With this TVC, Coca-Cola finally launched its global 'Share A Coke' campaign in India to highlight the evolving boundaries of relationships in this modern society. “Relationships are special for Indians and with this campaign, we wanted to look at them in a whole new way and celebrate their uniqueness. The campaign is all about connecting people and bringing them together to create memories that they cherish for life,” says Ajay Bathija, director-colas, Coca-Cola India and South-West Asia.

Unlike the original Ogilvy & Mather campaign that targeted popular names of people, McCann Worldgroup decided to use kinship terms instead, based on the results of a survey conducted on its target audience. McCann’s CEO & CCO, Prasoon Joshi, said, “On one hand, we work with universal human insights, and on the other hand, we are in sync with the cultural granularity of every market we operate in. The current Coca-Cola campaign reflects this nuanced understanding wherein we felt this is the best way to connect with the Indian target audience.”

The terms made their way on the Coca-Cola labels along with their unique taglines — ‘My teacher. My friend’ for Daddy, ‘Above the rest. Simply the best’ for Mom, ‘Supermodel. Super role model’ for Sis, ‘Troublemaker. Merrymaker’ for Bro and more. The use of languages including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Malayalam, Oriya, Assamese, Gujarati, Punjabi and Marathi was a masterstroke of sorts at targeting the regional market.  

With the tune of ‘Har Rishta Bola, Mere Naam ki Coca-Cola’ playing in the backdrop as the ad film draws to an end, the Coca-Cola TVCs seem to have hit the sweet-spot of Indian sentimentality.