• by Erik Oster , July 25, 2023

This summer Coca-Cola is bringing AI to concert-goers at a series of music festivals across the country through its Coke Studio activation that lets fans take center stage.

Coca-Cola teamed up with experiential agency Momentum Worldwide to give festival-goers a taste of (virtual) stardom. The Coke Studio activation, launched in May, will be featured at a series of major music festivals this summer and early fall, including Lollapalooza in Chicago and Austin (Texas) City Limits.

Combining various AI elements -- including Chat GPT and AI video generation -- Coke Studio  lets participants create a track, music video, and album cover in about as much time as it takes to wait in a long line for the bathroom.

Fans at participating music festivals can enter the two-story Coke Studio and answer a series of questions the program then uses to generate the group’s Real Stars identity, which includes name, song, and album art -- as well as the music and video elements themselves.

But while it may feel like a magically effortless endeavor for festival-goers, it required a lot of work to bring the experience to life, Momentum Global Chief Technology Officer Jason Alan Snyder explained -- not just for the creative tech involved, but also in ensuring brand safety and legal compliance.

This entailed working closely not just with Coca-Cola’s brand and marketing teams but also legal counsel, to mitigate the risk of the generative AI doing anything in conflict with Coca-Cola brand guidelines or the company’s privacy and security policies.

Snyder said ensuring brand safety was “front-of-mind” for its technology strategy. Momentum spent enough time early in the process in engineering responses, working with different AI tools and connecting technology, to avoid any hiccups along the way.

“We spent a lot of time training our models to have AI understand not [just] what to do, but what not to do as well,” he explained. “We went through a ton of rigorous training around all of that.”

Ultimately, the experience may prove  a training ground not just for the teams involved, but the broader marketing possibilities of generative AI.

“We broke a lot of new ground here. My hope is it helped Coca-Cola gain confidence in using this technology,  knowing that this technology can be used, can be safe, and result in fun, positive results for brands,” Snyder said.