Coca-Cola’s "Open Happiness" global marketing campaign kicked off in January 2009, when Cee Lo Green and Janelle Monae appeared in a music video that exclusively debuted on FOX's American Idol.

A year later, the "Open Happiness" theme took a tangible, and unforgettable form — a vending machine that appeared in the common room of St. John’s University in New York. It was rigged to dispense flowers, pizza and a six-foot sub resulting in a viral swish of happiness, generating more than 1 million views in the first week and still attracting comments 2 million views later.

The campus Coke machine stunt migrated to London, and morphed into a Hug Machine at the National University of Singapore in a gestural marketing stunt where a squeeze yielded a soda. Since then the Coca-Cola Happiness machine has popped up in local activations around the world, in markets including India, Buenos Aires, Indonesia, Tokyo, Istanbul for a special Valentine's Day stunt, and back to Singapore, this time promoting recycling in June.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola ♥ the Olympic Games. After all, the soda maker has been lapping up the Olympics for every bit of marketing goodwill it can get for more than 80 years.

Now this year’s Olympics are in full swing and Coca-Cola can see the light at the end of the tunnel of its Move to the Beat campaign with singer Katy B and producer Mark Ronson that kicked off ahead of its sponsorship of the 8,000-mile Olympic torch relay. It's been a busy year with a variety of London 2012 marketing tie-ins.

And now Coca-Cola is extending its musical chops in a just-announced partnership with will.i.am to launch a sustainability-collaboration platform for brands dubbed EKOCYCLE, which is partnering to produce greener Beats by Dr Dre headphones — a brand that isn't music to the London Olympics organizers' ears.Continue reading...

Always a bonanza for marketers (as the New York Times' Stuart Elliott notes), campaigns pegged to the Olympics are often overly serious and attempt to be tearjerkers, as P&G knows all too well. Still, its Old Spice brand is retickling its Old Spice Guy funny bone by partnering again with W+K on an Olympics commercial. "I Will Live Forever," above, stars a skinny hero who listens to a self-help tape and somehow manages to win a slew of medals and a ton of hearts while smelling good all along the way.Continue reading...

While many global marketers are aiming Olympics-related campaigns at young consumers, the real core of TV watchers of London's Summer Olympics are expected to be older Gen X-ers and boomers. Those generations also struggle more than younger ones with obesity and other health issues.

All of that may be why Coca-Cola is using its Olympics sponsorship to do more than promote its new global "Move to the Beat" campaign, which is aimed at teens. Another new initiative by Coke is highlighting active lifestyles by centering on an "eight-pack" of athletes even though the first one revealed — Shawn Johnson — won't be competing in London following her recent surprise retirement from the sport.

In a challenging time in America for soft drink brands, led by New York City's proposed ban on large soft drinks, Coke is hoisting a healthy living banner into the London 2012 Olympics with a campaign which claims that — despite being dismissed as overcaloric sugar water by many health critics — the brand actually has an association with healthy lifestyles.Continue reading...

Following rumors last fall, Coca-Cola confirmed that it's producing a global TV series to woo teens with music in more than 30 countries during the 2012 Summer Olympic Games.

As a (lightly) branded entertainment extension of its global youth and music-oriented "Move to the Beat" Olympics marketing platform, Beat TV is being distributed in partnership with MTV Networks International, producing 10 episodes aimed at bringing youths some of the cultural flavor and excitement of the Games and its London setting. It's also not to be confused with "Move to the Beat TV," above, a web series Coca-Cola produced for European audiences as part of its Olympic marketing. (Coke's Move to the Beat campaign just picked up a bronze Cannes Lions award for mobile this week.)

While sponsored TV programming isn't new — look at NBC's recent Escape Routes series touting the Ford Escape crossover vehicle — Coke says Beat TV will run as a regular TV show (including channels with official rights to the Olympics and previous ad commitments from Coca-Cola); it won't feel like an infomercial for Coke's official Olympics sponsorship and the brand's presence won't be "overt"; and ad opportunities will be open to other brands.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola held a "secret gig" in London on Friday night, featuring producer Mark Ronson and singer Katy B promoting "Move to the Beat," the anthem and youth-oriented integrated marketing platform for the London 2012 summer Olympic games.

Coca-Cola brought its "Move to the Beat" 2012 Summer Olympics campaign in Belgium with a dance-activated version of its gift-giving Happiness machine. Giveaways ranged from the obvious (a case of Coke) to the human — check it out above.