Coca-Cola lifts sales by 6% with personalised, omnichannel campaign

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 

Strengthening Coca-Cola’s relevance across Hong Kong’s diverse dining occasion

Coca-Cola’s food-pairing theme has long been a cornerstone of its marketing strategy, reinforcing its role as the perfect complement to any meal. Hong Kong is known for its vibrant and diverse food culture, but this presents a challenge for the brand: Despite being an iconic global brand, Coke needs to continually innovate to stand out in a highly competitive beverage market. From flavoured teas and juices to sodas and energy drinks, consumers have endless options when deciding on a beverage to pair with their meals.

For a recent initiative, the brand wanted to create a strong association between Coca-Cola and the various cuisine types and dining moments enjoyed by consumers in Hong Kong.

With Hong Kong’s vibrant restaurant scene, people frequently make spontaneous dining decisions. Coca-Cola saw an opportunity to deliver personalised messages at the right moments with the right mix of media channels to influence consumers’ choices. At the same time, Coca-Cola wanted to maximise the value of its first-party data to enrich audience segmentation and more precisely reach the right people.

Coca-Cola and its agency, WPP Media, worked with The Trade Desk to develop an omnichannel approach featuring personalised messaging. This strategy enabled the brand to reach consumers across a variety of dining moments, helping to ensure Coke felt naturally relevant to key cuisines while driving measurable engagement.

SOLUTION 

Delivering personalised messaging in the moments that matter

Coca-Cola used our platform and premium inventory to run an omnichannel campaign that allowed the brand to reach the right consumers at the right times across relevant touchpoints. This included using:

• Online video (OLV) and display ads to increase awareness and engagement
• Digital out-of-home (DOOH) ads for high visibility during consumers’ commutes and in dining locations
• Uber placements to reach audiences in transit 

Dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) was a key component of the strategy that let the brand deliver personalised, contextually relevant ads in real time. The campaign was strategically designed around Hong Kong consumers’ dining behaviours — factoring in who they dine with, the most popular cuisines searched during mealtimes, and how patterns differ between weekdays and weekends. This approach helped ensure brand relevance and resonance throughout the dining journey. Friend groups, for example, were shown BBQ-themed ads on Friday evenings, while couples saw ads pairing Coca-Cola with Japanese cuisine on Sunday evenings.

The brand further used several smart tactics to connect with its audience. Combing first-party data from the Coke+ loyalty app with a website tracking pixel offered new insights about visitor behaviour. With these insights, the team built lookalike audiences to find new consumers with similarities to existing customers.

Layering interest-based and contextual targeting helped broaden reach and improve performance compared to non-DCO campaigns. For example, Coke wanted to reach consumers while they were reading food blogs, browsing restaurant reviews, or commuting. Users who had previously engaged with the brand’s website or app were also retargeted with personalised ads.

The brand then used AI-powered optimisation to refine campaign performance in real time by prioritising media spending on better-performing sectors and inventory.

Coca-Cola relied on a range of tools to measure success. The Coke+ app pixels tracked traffic from various media channels, while a brand lift study, conducted by Happydemics, provided insights into the campaign’s influence on awareness and consideration.

RESULTS 

Delivering measurable brand and business growth in a competitive market

The campaign strategies delivered exceptional performance by every measure:

• Using DCO resulted in a click-through rate (CTR) 3x higher than other display strategies — and with 25% greater viewability.
• The first-party data strategies generated a 75% higher CTR than third-party data strategies.
• The brand increased engagement by identifying high-performing media channel combinations and adjusting media spending. For instance, the CTRs during 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on specific days of the week were 3.7x higher than that of other display campaigns.
• The brand lift study revealed a 16-point increase in ad recall, 19-point increase for brand image, and a 13-point increase for consideration, compared to the control and benchmark groups.

These campaign results drove significant improvements to business outcomes:

• The overall conversion rate was 25% higher than the campaign benchmark. The conversion rate also increased 2.4x over the course of the campaign, with AI-driven optimisation redirecting spend to the most effective audience and media channel combinations.
• By the end of the campaign, Coca-Cola Hong Kong’s sales volume was 6% higher than the same period the previous year.
• Market share increased by 3.6% over the previous year.

These results highlight how data-driven targeting, DCO, and AI-powered optimisation within an omnichannel strategy can help enhance brand perception, influence consumer actions, and ultimately drive measurable growth for a renowned brand like Coca-Cola.

Discover how data-driven omnichannel advertising with dynamic creative optimisation can help you reach consumers at the moments that matter most. Contact us or reach out to your account manager at The Trade Desk today.