In 2008, Coca-Cola was one of the official sponsors of the UEFA
football championships (Euro 2008) and wanted to reignite the World
Cup spirit that had taken over the country during 2006. Coke
decided to act as a facilitator, uniting people in their love for
football and for the national team. The idea was to get Coke to
bring even opponents together.
The key target audience was 18-29 year olds who were used to
communicating via social networks. Usually people in communities
search for people with similar interests, but Coke wanted to turn
this idea on its head so that people could connect with people who
are very different. Coke partnered with social community StudiVZ -
4 times bigger than Facebook. We integrated a Coke EURO platform
with a new and unique fan-profile generator called the "Mismatch
Generator". The users had to answer 9 questions about their
lifestyle. These profiles run into a database and weekly every
participant got 3 opposite mismatches allocated, for example a
meat-lover would be matched with a vegetarian, but they were
unified by their love of football. Then each week one pair of
mismatches won a fan partner championship ticket. The
Mismatch-Generator was pushed by standard online advertising as
well as personal addressing and viral components in the
community.
Some 100.000 fans in the target-group were activated by the
campaign and over 530.000 different mismatches were created. In the
end, the activation program contributed considerably to Coca-Cola
becoming the Euro 2008 advertiser with the highest awareness and
likeability for its Euro communication.