Coca-Cola travels the globe seeking happiness, consumer buy-in

When Tony Martin, Kelly Ferris and Antonio Santiago returned to Atlanta on Dec. 29 after a yearlong jaunt finding and recording scenes of happiness around the world, the first thing they wanted to do was rest.

"We're going to be restless in a few days, probably," said Santiago, a 25-year-old martial arts instructor and university student from Mexico City. "But first, we need to sleep."

But the trip's sponsors at Coca-Cola Co. have their own needs. The company wants to figure out what worked, and what didn't, as it crafts its next big social media and PR campaign.

A top executive said Expedition 206, named for the 206 countries where Coca-Cola does business, marks a shift in attitudes at the company's North Avenue headquarters. The company encouraged fans to vote online to choose the three-person team that would eventually represent it around the world, and then turned the team loose with the mission to survey people about what makes them happy. (Food, family and soccer, among other things.)

"We did something we'd never done before," said Clyde Tuggle, a senior vice president at Coca-Cola who oversaw the program. "We basically turned over the public relations for our brand to the consumers."

In the future, Coca-Cola needs to be more transparent and give up more control over its brand message, Tuggle said. "Let people participate in defining the brand," he said. "That requires a higher degree of letting go."

The history of the U.S. beverage business contains notable examples of companies building campaigns around responses from fans, said Harvard Business School marketing professor John Quelch, co-author of "Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy."

The Pepsi Challenge, a nationwide taste test that pitted Pepsi against Coca-Cola, was "hugely effective," Quelch said. Snapple based commercials on letters sent to the company from fans around the country.

Social media like Facebook illustrate but didn't create the huge potential of word-of-mouth marketing, Quelch said. "The principles of engagement and empowerment have been with us for decades."

PepsiCo, Coca-Cola's main rival, has been one of the most aggressive companies in pulling its fans into the creative process. The company's Doritos brand airs consumer-generated commercials during the Super Bowl, and this year Pepsi Max will do the same. PepsiCo's Mountain Dew brand, one of the strongest in the U.S. beverage business, consults 4,000 members of its "Dew Labs" about upcoming flavors and packages. In recent months, fans logged onto dietdewchallenge.com to vote, bracket-style, on which diet flavors Dew should introduce around March Madness.

Meanwhile, Expedition 206 is Coca-Cola's most ambitious social media project to date. Armed with iPhones, Blackberrys, Apple laptops, digital sound recorders and video and still cameras, the team set out to capture scenes of happiness and figure out the source of joy around the world. They recorded days of footage for a possible documentary. Security concerns, weather and missing passports forced the team to bypass 20 markets, including Somalia and Iraq, but they eventually logged 275,000 miles and 186 countries.

They sampled borscht in Red Square, chatted up taxi drivers in Saudi Arabia and tried to charm surly immigration officials in Uzbekistan. "Always smile," said Ferris, a 24-year-old student from Brussels. "That really helps."