Coke's Global, Holiday Campaign To Launch Over Weekend

Coca-Cola is launching a holiday campaign that includes a new ad giving a holiday spin to the global "Coke Side of Life" campaign it launched in 2006 by AOR Wieden+Kennedy of Portland, Ore.

The new spot, produced by Buenos Aires-based agency La Negra United, has a one-world theme about family and friends sharing board. The camera follows a family setting up a meal in the street of a charming town that could be in the south of France or San Francisco. A woman brings food, and others bring chairs and tables. Then others join from other families, and soon the table extends down the street and into the business district, where people bring out office tables and chairs, and the meal itself changes. Then, the table extends into the countryside, with people from other towns joining in.

As mixed races, ethnic groups and cultures sit together, it's clear the table extends around the world. The one beverage they share is ... Coca-Cola. Text reads: "Every family is a world; and the world is a family." The theme line is "The Coke Side of Family."

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The new ad debuts in the U.S. this weekend during sports and family-content shows on channels like ESPN and ABC's college football broadcasts and ABC's broadcast of "The Polar Express" later this month. Then, per the company, it will become part of the global campaign.

The ad complements Coke's "Around the Table" spot, which is all about the importance of the dining room table and also uses the "Coke Side of Family" theme line. That ad shows families gathering around their dining room tables with the message that a table that has bills on it, computers on it and the other bric-a-brac of family life should be the maypole for meals.

That ad--via Wieden+Kennedy--is running regionally, but will go national early next year.

Coca-Cola is also reviving the "Arctic Beach Party" ad in which a polar bear family, including a cub, dances with penguins. The company says it will also use its iconic Coke-wielding Santa in out-of-home advertising this year.

A company spokesperson says that the advertisement was not produced for the holidays, nor does it have a holiday theme, but it was chosen because it aligns with Coca-Cola's heritage.

"Bringing people together over Coca-Cola is part of the brand's DNA," she says. "But the ad is also very appropriate for the holidays." The spokesperson adds that the company has used La Negra United for local advertising in Uruguay. "It's not necessarily a new assignment for them. The beauty of a big system like ours is that if we see things on a local level that make sense outside of that market, we can use it. It has an international feel."

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