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All the Ways That Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke Backfired

Here’s how to launch personalized marketing campaigns without repeating these mistakes

Kele Mogotsi
Better Marketing
6 min readJan 26, 2021

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Coke can written “Share a Coke with Kele”
Image by author

A few years ago, Coca-Cola.com saw an 870% spike in traffic. The brand welcomed 25 million new Facebook fans and the marketing team celebrated.

This was the result of a unique marketing campaign that highlighted an interesting fact about people: we love to see our names on things. Our name is our identity. We associate our name with a sense of ownership and belonging, which drives brand loyalty.

Some of the biggest brands in the world have caught onto this marketing ‘trick.’

Coca-Cola kicked-off their unforgettable #ShareACoke campaign in 2011. Instead of the famous logo, they now printed people’s first names on bottles and cans.

Around the world, consumers posted pictures of Coke cans with their names on them. Most importantly, millennials did what they did so well, and shared it on social media.

Industry watcher, Suyi Adelakun, stated that having your name printed on a Coca-Cola bottle showed consumers that the brand recognized them as a person, not a sales statistic.

The campaign spread globally and in 2014, they printed 250 of the most common American names…

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Better Marketing
Better Marketing

Published in Better Marketing

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Kele Mogotsi
Kele Mogotsi

Written by Kele Mogotsi

An introverted attention-seeker and chronic continent-hopper. Rhymes with jelly.

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