Coca-Cola's creative crossroads

'When you have 138 years under your wing, your brand can go two ways. Either you become complacent – “Let’s milk this iconicity to the bones” – or it grounds you in a very humble way.’

Coca-Cola global vice president of creative strategy and content Islam ElDessouky caught Contagious up on the brand’s relationship with its advertising legacy, the challenges of injecting freshness into a deeply established positioning, and why traditional media remains Coke’s preferred method of communication.

There aren’t many brands whose ads have touched culture in the same way as Coca-Cola’s. The glass bottle was designed to be identifiable by touch alone, its logo is recognised all over the world, and the brand even popularised the image of Santa as the rotund old man in (on-brand) red and white robes.

From its 1971 Hilltop commercial to the staggeringly successful Share a Coke, ‘we’re building upon the work of giants’, says ElDessouky, who is inspired rather than intimidated by Coke’s heritage. ‘When you think about such an amazing history of advertising you have this feeling of greatness.’ 

The iconic red and white packaging is the main character in the brand’s Cannes Lions Grand Prix-winning campaign, Recycle Me. Created by Open X, WPP’s bespoke agency for Coca-Cola, the campaign was designed to draw attention to the brand’s sustainability commitments (Coca-Cola has committed to making all of its packaging recyclable by 2025 and to recycling a bottle or can for each one sold by 2030). 

The team crushed hundreds of cans of Coca-Cola – mimicking how customers crush its cans before putting them in the recycling – and turned the misshapen logos into print and out-of-home executions. 

The campaign leans into Coke’s iconicity, says Guillermo Vega, Ogilvy’s global creative network lead for WPP Open X, and achieves ‘a level of simplicity that’s rarely achieved in our industry’.

Recycle Me also speaks to Coca-Cola’s steadfast loyalty to traditional media. No AI features or visual effects – the main piece of tech used was a machine press. That’s no accident, says ElDessouky. ‘Marketers often get bored of the traditional classic vehicles of communication and move on to the new gimmicky stuff. Coca-Cola has been built on those vehicles and we’re big believers in them. Consumers expect to see us in those spaces.’

It’s even a top five priority (alongside sustainability) at Coke, says ElDessouky: ‘How do we get the classical media vehicles back to creating magic for us?’

Sure, it’s easy to go back to basics when your ‘basics’ are a logo that is recognised by 94% of the planet – but as ElDessouky points out, stripping back the extras and playing with your most distinctive assets can be risky. ‘It takes a brave client to say, hey, we're going to fuck with our logo, the one thing that’s sacred and comes with a ridiculous guideline handbook.’

Read the full interview here. Contagious.

Campaign of the Week: Alcaraz Signs /

According to internet lore, it was in the early 2000s when tennis players went from signing fan memorabilia at the end of the game to daubing their autograph on the lens of a courtside camera. These days, it’s practically de rigueur, but at the Indian Wells Open in March, Carlos Alcaraz sparked a media frenzy when, instead of his name, he signed off his first-round win with the cryptic message ‘N. See You Soon’ in red ink.

Fans, influencers and broadcasters were ablaze with questions: could this be a reference to Nike, or perhaps fellow Spanish tennis great Rafael Nadal?  Alcaraz stoked the intrigue after winning his second game, signing ‘Tudum’ across the camera. All was revealed when he beat Alexander Zverev in the third round (14 March), all was revealed. The tennis pro signed off with ‘No more secrets’, while Netflix revealed itself as the ‘N’ in question with a video on social media announcing the release of its docuseries about the sports star.  

Sports docuseries have exploded in popularity in recent years, but they’ve also exploded in volume, amplifying the noise that needs cutting through. By taking a guaranteed post-game ritual and branding it, Netflix hijacked the media of its competitors in live TV broadcasting and reached exactly the group of fans it needed to. The campaign was created by David Madrid. Contagious.

An interview with Lego CMO, Julia Goldin /

‘Lego has mastered risk-taking,’ says Julia Goldin, global chief product and marketing officer at The Lego Group.

In a new interview with Contagious, Goldin discusses the role of AI in play, the boom of gaming entertainment in popular culture, why an in-house agency model works so well for the organisation and how the market-leading brand fosters a culture of embracing bold ideas.

The iconic toy brand is renowned for bringing creative play to life and putting product innovation at the heart of its approach, but Goldin flagged the challenges of applying this mindset to its marketing.

‘You have a brief you need to deliver on, it has to work, and then we get stuck in being safe... You have to give yourself time, take some risks and be prepared to fail. Don’t bet the house, but if you want to do something really different then start a bit earlier and give yourself more time for testing.’

She also points to the threat of complacency in the marketing and creative industry. 'At what point have we forgotten that advertising is a creative discipline and we’re not here to just push out concrete rational messages? [...] If we truly believe it’s a craft, [...] we need to challenge ourselves and up the ante. Otherwise, I can see a world where AI is going to churn out all the same functional ads, but is it going to engage? Is it going to capture people’s imagination?'

Read the full interview here. Contagious.

Most Contagious: Trust Us /

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