• Advertising Age, Monday, January 3, 2011 9:45 AM

Expedition 206 is not back from the South Pole, K2, the moon, or the Amazon Basin, but Coca-Cola is heralding the return of its "happiness ambassadors" from the far corners of the Earth with the same fanfare Shackleton got after he staggered into a whale camp on South Georgia a century or so ago.

Coca-Cola's happiness crew isn't too shabby. The group of young people visited 206 countries where Coke is sold in its effort to find happiness. The team returned to Atlanta on Dec. 29, but its trip is documented on Expedition206.com, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, where the effort has garnered 650 million impressions. China's QQ instant-message service got a billion visits related to the tour, per the company.

Among places the tour visited were the Vancouver Olympics, FIFA World Cup, and Shanghai 2010 World Expo. It also built awareness for the company's social media efforts in Latin America and the Pacific Rim. The company doesn't want to be judged solely on total followers on platforms like Twitter, where it only got 1,800 followers. "We made the conscious decision at the beginning that this was a local activation," said Anne Carelli, senior communications manager-digital communications at Coca-Cola.

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