Coca-Cola just designed special ‘hugging’ cans for the Paris Olympics
July 17, 2024
Coca-Cola just designed special ‘hugging’ cans for the Paris Olympics
Coke’s new cans are part of a bigger campaign to bring a message of togetherness to the Summer Games.
Coca-Cola is hoping the Paris Olympic Games bring people together, and the company has designed its marketing accordingly, playing into the theme of togetherness with a series of new cans that can be arranged to look like they’re hugging each other.
The company collaborated with three French artists to design cans that show hands and arms in an embrace. “The campaign celebrates the power of sports to unite people and highlights Coca-Cola’s iconic hug motif as the central theme for Paris 2024,” Aurélia Durand, one of the artists who worked on the cans, wrote in an Instagram caption.
Coca-Cola, a worldwide Olympic and Paralympic Games partner, has centered much of its message for the Games on hugging. In a new ad spot, “It’s Magic When the World Comes Together,” Olympic swimmers Lilly King, Kaylene Corbett and Annie Lazor share a hug with Tatjana Schoenmaker, a South African athlete who won her country’s first Olympic gold medal in Tokyo when she broke the women’s record for 200-meter breaststroke.
The ad shows the athletes’ hug inspiring spontaneous hugging among spectators at the venue, viewers at home, and even astronauts in orbit. “Olympic athletes train hard for four years with the goal of winning the gold,” Islam ElDessouky, Coca-Cola’s global head of creative strategy and content, said in a statement. “So when you see them hugging, it’s a truly powerful symbol of human connection.”
Coke has more plans to play into hugs during the Games, including sharing “real-time hugs captured in Paris” on social media as well as out-of-home creative across Paris metro stations and elsewhere.
Coca-Cola’s Olympic campaign was 18 months in the making, and was created by Ogilvy, EssenceMediacom, VML, Hogarth Worldwide, and Open X, a team at the creative agency WPP that manages its Coke account.
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