Why Coca-Cola Teamed-Up With Central Cee

Coca-Cola is a brand synonymous with music - from its iconic Holidays Are Coming Christmas jingle to its 1971 Hilltop ad joining the official charts. 

The global drinks maker's latest musical venture sees the creation of an original song, Taste Every Second, written and performed by British rapper Central Cee. 

The campaign, by its creative agency WPP Open X [led by VML], celebrates the opening of the 2026/2027 Premier League season, alongside the emotional highs, lows, and, unpredictable moments the football season brings. 

“Every major moment in life, every decision and choice that we make in life typically has a soundtrack, and the biggest sporting events are the same,” says Joshua Burke, global head of music and culture at Coca-Cola.

Unique to Coca-Cola is that the track was launched through its own record label, Real Thing Records, which launched just last year. According to Burke, producing such work within its own label really allows for a connection with fans and consumers.

Burke details why Coca-Cola decided to put music at the heart of its latest campaign, the making of the song with Central Cee, and why Real Thing Records is so important to the brand.

Creative Salon: Music is at the front and center of this campaign. Why have Coca-Cola decided to make it the main focus? 

The way in which we work with music has evolved significantly over the past several years, where music has traditionally been a background mechanic to support ads, sync licensing, a celebrity endorsement, or a badge or a logo that we slap on a festival.

Music in the modern era of 2026 and beyond gives us more of an opportunity to connect with fans and consumers in a much more authentic and genuine way. Music is special because nothing can carry a message like a song, and nothing can connect with culture and human beings more emotionally than music.

And so, when we think about music today versus yesterday, we think about all the ways that we can leverage not only music, not only celebrity talent, or amazing artists like Central Cee, but also how we are able to tap into and add value to the fandoms that support and surround the artists as a means to communicate our brand messaging to the world.

Every major moment in life, every decision and choice that we make in life typically has a soundtrack, and the biggest sporting events are the same. 

So I think that for all those reasons, we felt that music was really a great way forward.

And obviously Central Cee is the face of the campaign. Why choose him? Why metrics were you looking for beyond just follow count to decide who was going to be the face of the campaign?

Central Cee is more than just a face or a celebrity; he’s an artist's artist as much as he has this incredible fandom, and he also has lyrically an amazing way to be both poetic but and real at the same time. He's an amazing storyteller, and so we knew that we wanted to create the work, and, working with the English Premier League EPL, create a story that really unpacked the feeling and the emotion, and all of the different moments in football as a passion point, and how do we unpack that?

And obviously we needed to tell a great story, and once the decision was made that the song would ultimately become almost the voiceover, it takes a lot of trust to partner with an artist for something as important as a partnership with EPL and Coca-Cola — two big organisations.

And when working with an artist, we need to also work with someone that we can trust with not only our brand but also our partners. So working with Cench, as his team calls him, and his fans call him, has been incredibly rewarding, and we were very happy to have such a generous partner, and someone who could actually tell the story with us in an authentic and special way.

Tell us about the process of making the song creatively. How involved creatively was Central C and his team?

We launched a record label last year called Real Thing Records, and if you notice, the song was released through Real Thing Records in partnership with Columbia and Sony. The purpose of our record label is to release music and support artists across borders to really dig into the authenticity of the messaging of the music to connect more deeply with fandom.

And so we obviously sign our own artists, but in this case, working with an artist like Central Cee and having the privilege of releasing music with Columbia and Central Cee's team was a big responsibility. 

I think that one of the things that a lot of brands get criticised for is that when we work with big artists, we tend to want to overmanufacture the musical element. I like to always remind myself, our teams, our partners, is that when we're working with an artist, the reason that we're working with that artist is because of what they represent and what they've built, and their fandom and their community, and the best possible way to work with these artists is to let them be them. 

Obviously, as a brand, we have to ensure that our messaging and the campaign and the storytelling that we have built with the creative strategy, all needs to be present, but when we're working with an artist like Central Cee, especially, it needs to be more of a collaboration than a brand dictating a brief. 

We gave a broad brief in terms of what we wanted to achieve; like any other campaign, we had a creative concept for what the film would be like, but ultimately, it's a little bit like walking a tightrope without a net that you have to have a lot of trust in the partner.

Because while the brief is fairly general, the song ultimately ended up replacing the traditional voiceover of the film, and so we needed to calibrate the visuals really based on a lot of what the lyrics happen to be in the song.

Central Cee drove the songwriting. There was obviously rounds of feedback and things that we needed to address in terms of some of the lyrics or the structure. But we tried to be as hands-off as possible and really let Cench's artistry shine.

What did Coca-Cola feel was missing with their relationship with the music industry that they felt the need to establish a record company?

Coca-Cola has an amazing legacy and history in music, spanning back decades. We set an extraordinarily high bar in the '60s when we relaunched the Hilltop ad, I’d like to teach the world to sing.’ That was the first time ever in the history of advertising where a song that was created for a campaign actually became a cultural hit and was on the charts.

For anyone that's in my role in this company since then, there's always a lot of pressure, to ensure that the legacy of music and Coca-Cola is healthy and strong.

We have, in sport actually, an amazing property that was launched decades ago called Copa Coca-Cola, which supports youth footballers and really helps cultivate communities. And for music, we also have a history of supporting emerging talent and helping artists connect with fans across borders.

We felt that this record label and launching a record label would be a really great way for us to be able to genuinely and earnestly give back to the culture that we've been borrowing from, and supporting emerging artists with no strings attached, meaning that even the artists that we sign, we're not requiring them to be part of any brand campaign.

One thing I'll mention is that we don't operate on our own; we always partner with another label. We launched with UMG. This particular release is with Columbia.

Every dollar that we make with Real Thing Records gets reinvested back into the music programs and to the label. It's there as an authentic beacon of celebrating the future of music.

Music has always played such a key role for Coca-Cola. What does this campaign show about how music is evolving for the brand?

One of the first things is it's not just syncing an existing song to an ad. It's not just having Central Cee being an endorser of a product. Music is more integrated into the fabric of the storytelling, and when words fail, music picks up. 

Music is not an afterthought. Music is not a mechanic to support an ad. Music, we weave music into the fabric of our marketing, whether it's through a program or a campaign like this one, or whether it's through platforms like Coke Studio, or whether it's through the way that we even integrate with festivals.

And what would you like to see the industry doing more of when it comes to music?

The advertising industry has historically been built around borrowing equity from culture. I think that one of the things that we found is if we're trying to connect culturally with programs, what you give is what you get. So if you approach these marketing programs or music activations with the intention of adding value into the culture that you're trying to connect with, the response that you'll get for the brand and for the advertising industry will be greater than just renting.

Invest in the culture that you're trying to connect with.

How much value do you have in your agency partners that have helped bring this to life in WPP OpenX?

I think they're fantastic. Coca-Cola is obviously a big organisation, so is WPP. There are many different capabilities and many different ways of working.

I think that WPP Open X over the last few years have evolved with us in a very meaningful way, so that when we approach music programs or artist partnerships, they have been great collaborators and also very open, OpenX in the name, very open - open to participate with us in ways that might not be traditional.

And finally, we're seeing more and more AI music makers appearing. If a brand can that software to make their own song, do you think this could impact the licensing of artists in the future, and the way the music industry intertwines with advertising?

I believe that AI is an important and valuable tool to aid creation and to support artists. But from a global music perspective, our point of view is that we like to celebrate real artists and real musicians.

Is there an opportunity in the future where we might integrate AI and music? Perhaps. I don't think anyone at this point can rule it out completely.

But as of right now, and for what we're trying to build, I think the world needs realness. From a music perspective, what I can say is that AI is an extraordinarily important tool, but not the end result.