Galactic Fandom Meets Brand Power

Coca-Cola is a brand often associated with polar bears, Christmas lights, or even time in the sun. In a new twist from the 133-year-old beverage giant, picture Chewbacca opening up a cold can, embracing your inner jedi to fight for the last sip, lightsabers as makeshift can openers. 

‘Refresh Your Galaxy’ is exactly that: a unique collaboration between three globally loved brands, Coca-Cola, Disney, and Star Wars. Marking a 70-year relationship between Coca-Cola and Disney, the work is a celebration of the power of fandom across different communities as well as human connection. 

The hero film, made by Coca-Cola’s creative agency, WPP Open X, led by Ogilvy and supported by EssenseMediacom, sees cinema-goers experiencing the magic of Star Wars and Coca-Cola, and features a host of Easter Eggs and characters from the films from Darth Vader to Princess Leia.

“Like Coca-Cola, Star Wars is a multigenerational brand with fans that span decades,” explains Javier Meza, The Coca-Cola Company’s president and chief marketing officer Europe. “If a brand wants even 30 seconds, three minutes, or 30 minutes of someone’s attention, we have to bring something exciting to the table. A partnership like this - with the passion that surrounds Star Wars - gives us the opportunity to do exactly that.”

Alongside the main hero film, the campaign took a multi-channel approach, featuring 27 limited edition cans and bottles available for purchase around the globe at Disney Resorts, scannable out-of-home posters allowing fans to unlock augmented reality (AR) experiences, and even an experience for fans to upload videos of themselves that are then turned into Star Wars-style holograms.  

Creative Salon spoke with Meza about bringing the collaboration to life, what it means for Coca-Cola as a brand, and potential room for more in the future.

Creative Salon: What was the brief behind this Star Wars collaboration. What inspired the campaign to begin with?

Javier Meza:  We're talking about some pretty big brands - Disney, Star Wars, and Coca-Cola - all with a huge global presence. The idea was to connect these brands and their passionate fan communities by creating experiences that uplift people, elevate their day, and ultimately put a smile on their faces.

Brands like Star Wars and Coke are all about passion - and passion is what keeps us excited and helps us face life with a smile every day.

Of all the Disney brands, why choose Star Wars? Given the collection of iconic properties, what made this one stand out?

One of the reasons is that, like Coca-Cola, Star Wars is a multigenerational brand with fans that span decades. I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was around seven-years-old and the first movie came out.

Then, during COVID, I was in Atlanta and spent the whole period with my three kids - who are somewhere between Millennials and Gen Z. We watched the entire saga together. That’s the kind of household research that shows Star Wars’ unique power to connect across generations.

It’s a story about people coming together and fighting for ideals that inspire and energise. We believe Coca-Cola can be part of that - those values of inspiration and uplift really resonate with what the brand stands for.

Do you have any early indications of how successful the collaboration has been? 

We don’t have the specific numbers to share just yet, but what I can tell you is how we think about partnerships like this.

As I mentioned, it all starts with understanding consumer insights - motivations, passion points, the idea of community, and how inspiration can connect with the brand on a values and conceptual level.

When we build a marketing campaign, we always think in three dimensions. First, of course, is driving consumption - we want people to get the product in their hands and the liquid in their mouths. That’s obvious, and we track metrics around that.

The second dimension is about reinforcing brand values - aligning Coca-Cola’s equity with the values of the Star Wars universe. We track how well the campaign builds or strengthens brand equity.

And the third is data acquisition. Like any company today, first-party data is incredibly valuable. It gives us better insight and helps us design more effective media plans. So any program we launch is evaluated across those three pillars: transactions, brand equity, and data.

When it came to filming and pulling the whole project together, what was the biggest challenge? Star Wars and Coca-Cola both have such iconic histories - how did you even begin to approach the creative?

I’ll start by saying that yes - of course it was complex. But when you're working on something like this, and you’re a fan yourself, you forget about the challenges. You just think, 'this is going to be so cool when it’s done'. And that keeps you going.

That said, one of the big complexities is that this was a global program, which required coordination across multiple markets - not just within Coca-Cola, but also with our partners at Disney.

Another challenge is the way we design campaigns to deliver on those three pillars I mentioned - transactions, brand equity, and data. To achieve that, we always build multi-channel experiences. It's never just a single piece of content or a standalone video.

We think in terms of an entire ecosystem. Consumers might enter the Star Wars experience through the packaging - scanning a QR code - or they might see a piece of content on social media and click through. Maybe they experience it in retail, online or offline, or through a live activation.

We see the engagement as an orchestration of experiences. So producing that at scale, across markets, and coordinating all those touchpoints - that’s the real complexity.

How was it actually filmed? Did you work with a large cast of actors, or was CGI used - how did you bring it all to life?

It was a mix of both. There were a lot of actors involved, but there was also significant post-production work.

And beyond the ad itself, we also created an augmented reality experience - that required even more collaboration, with many people and partners involved. It really was a layered production across physical and digital elements.

Did WPP Open X play a key role in bringing this campaign to life? What’s it like working with them?

They played a key role. The entire project was coordinated and orchestrated by WPP, with Ogilvy as the lead agency. But it wasn’t just Ogilvy - because of the kind of multi-dimensional experience we were building, we needed several partners involved.

WPP didn’t just provide creative leadership; they also managed the orchestration across the ecosystem of agencies. That was critical.

They’re also quite innovative - they constantly push us with ideas that challenge boundaries, which we love. And for a project like this, you also need a level of discipline: clear milestones, decision points, timelines, and budget management. They really delivered on all of that.

We’re genuinely happy to have WPP Open X - the bespoke agency they created for us - as a partner on projects like this.

The power of fandom seems so central to Coca-Cola’s approach and much of your past work celebrates fandom. Why partner with Disney and Star Wars now?

We’re always looking for ideas that bring excitement to consumers. I often tell our marketing teams: life can be boring, let’s not be part of that.

Another way to put it is, we all lead busy lives. No one wakes up in the morning thinking, ‘What’s Coca-Cola doing today?’, they’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to get the kids to school, pay bills, hit deadlines’.

If a brand wants even 30 seconds, three minutes, or 30 minutes of someone’s attention, we have to bring something exciting to the table. A partnership like this - with the passion that surrounds Star Wars - gives us the opportunity to do exactly that.

So maybe the real question isn’t ‘why now?’, it’s ‘why not?’.

Given how massive all three brands are, what was the purpose of creating such a multi-layered campaign? You had the TV spot, out-of-home, digital, retail… Why not just stick with a high-impact TV ad?

There are two main reasons.

First, a multi-channel approach creates multiple gateways into the experience. If someone’s busy and misses the TV ad, that could be it - it’s gone. But if we also have OOH, digital, and retail activations, the chances of someone encountering the campaign go up significantly.

Second, when you connect those experiences - say someone buys a can, scans the QR code, logs in digitally, engages with the augmented reality experience, maybe plays to win tickets to a live event — you extend the amount of time they spend with the brand. You also raise the level of excitement.

So it’s about three things: creating more ways in, generating more excitement, and giving people more time engaging with both brands.

Do you have any plans to continue this collaboration, or possibly work with Disney again on other projects - not necessarily Star Wars-related?

Yes, absolutely. Every day we wake up asking, 'What do we do next?'. So yes, we have more plans in the works.

We don’t reveal too much too early, but our calendar for 2026 is already pretty defined, and there are definitely more collaborations coming.