shifting the battleground

Chinese New Year (CNY). It doesn't get bigger than that in China. It is a key purchase period for everyone, including Coca Cola, for who almost a third of the yearly sales had to be achieved during this CNY period in order to start the year with strong momentum. This is an occasion that impacted all segments of the population and the only time in the year where Coca Cola had to appeal to a much broader target audience then its usual yearlong target of Youth. And they had to do all of it, while standing out in a battle which is usually about who shouts the loudest . Phew!
The only way we could have met these goals was by understanding people’s needs, the culture in which these needs are expressed & creatively discovering the best solutions to meet those needs. And that's exactly what we set out to do, starting the journey of discovery by understanding what CNY meant to different sets of people in China.
For the teens, CNY was all about Obligations AND Preparation  
For the Young adults, seemed to be all about  Responsibility AND Preparation  
For the Parents, it was more about  Pressure AND Preparation  
For everybody, the commonality was the ‘Preparation’ leading up to the Celebration. 
And for all of them,  ‘the preparation’ was a lonely experience,  and lasted longer than the ephermeral CNY reunion dinner itself.  ‘Preparation’ was the phase that people spoke of with the most emotionally charged language. And that’s the phase they wished they could share with someone to anticipate the thrill of the upcoming celebration.
This led to the Connections Strategy -  Transforming the Often Lonely Job of Preparation (in the Journey towards and during CNY) into a shared Joy of Connection. 

The strategy helped define the role of Coke to be one of converting the seemingly mundane  preparation moments to the memorable by sharing & celebrating the preparation as a milestone in building genuine connection. Sharing the joy in the preparation, meant a digital heavy strategy and a phasing strategy that did not relegate the brand’s role to just the celebration, thus giving it a more differentiated and emotionally potent canvass to play in.
The focus of media efforts thus, shifted to the ‘preparation’ phase – seeding the association of Coke with Happiness outside the noise of the celebration – sharing their preparation journeys – be it travel, shopping, preparing the home , making reservations, with their family and friends – building connections and extending the joy of the celebration.
Shifts of budgets to Digital, meant the creation of a stronger & more relevant e-commerce experience, leveraging A Fu & A Jiao  (traditional CNY mascots) to share the genuine connection in the preparation as part of  an integrated experieces executed in collaboration with a mutlifunctional team.

This work for Coca Cola, for their biggest annual tent pole event, and in their biggest and most competitive market, met the lofty goals it set out to achieve and exceeded the sales target more than expectations. It was a happy and prosperous Chinese New Year, indeed !