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Coca-Cola ramps up mobile for Share a Coke personalization campaign

Coca-Cola?s Share a Coke program makes a return engagement this summer with a much bigger focus on mobile and social in response to how consumers engaged with last year?s campaign.

Share a Coke first launched last summer with cans of Coca-Cola, Coke Zero and Diet Coke that were personalized with 250 names. This year, the program - which is available in Britain - will feature up to 1,000 personalized bottles, a mobile optimized Web site, a digital application for tracking down bottles with specific names, social video and digital content.

?After the overwhelming popularity of Share a Coke last year, this year we've made it bigger and better,? said Bobby Brittain, brand director at Coca-Cola. ?Not only are there more names, but we've made it even easier for people to use their mobiles to be part of the campaign.

?At the mobile optimized Web site shareacoke.co.uk, people can share a virtual bottle with friends and even download personalized mobile wallpapers for their handset,? he said.

?We've also created a digital Name Dropper, which brings all images using the #shareacoke into one place. This means that people can track where in the country different named bottles have been found.?

Comprehensive microsite
A lot of the engagement Coca-Cola received last year during the campaign came from consumers searching for their name, which is why the brand added more names this year.

Over 1,000 names appear on bottles of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coke Zero for this year?s Share a Coke program. Some of the names include Mum, Dad, Mate and Friends.

Coca-Cola claims that the list of names will cover 80 percent of the British population.

The digital elements enable consumers to share a virtual bottle with friends and download personalized wallpapers for their desktop or mobile phone.

The Share a Coke microsite ties in with Coca-Cola's other marketing programs around the 2014 FIFA World Cup, encouraging consumers to enter a code from their packaging for a chance to win instant prizes.

The microsite also integrates marketing for Diet Coke, including the chance to win an annual magazine subscription by entering a code from the packaging.

The Coke Zero content on the microsite showcases new packaging that includes an augmented reality experience set to music via a partnership with Blippar.

Name Dropper
An online personalization site is planned for later in the summer that will feature more than 500,000 names to choose from.

Consumers can track down bottles as they are found via the Name Dropper digital app which will aggregate social media content using the campaign hashtag #shareacoke along with the name that appears on the bottle.

The campaign also includes TV ads featuring a dog named Bobby on a quest to find his personalized Coke bottle.

Consumers will also be able to get personalized products at pop-up events in major cities.

Additionally, a shopper marketing component will enable consumers to instantly print labels featuring their name.

?Last year there were over 300,000 acts of consumer engagement with the Share A Coke campaign, ranging from excited tweets to UGC on Facebook and countless images of personalized bottles on Instagram,? Mr. Brittain said.

?As Share A Coke is intrinsically social, this year we've made sure that we bring out those social elements with more content, like the Bobby video, the digital Name dropper, virtual bottle and downloads that can all be accessed via a mobile,? he said.

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York