'Sprite Is Summer': Inside Coca-Cola’s Coolest Brand Play Yet

Sprite is most certainly a summer brand, and its latest campaign is embracing that to the hilt. The Coca-Cola-owned lemon and lime drink is the third largest beverage brand globally (and also made third place in terms of sales in the US this year), having built itself to become an icon within counter culture.

Oana Vlad, global VP of Sprite, positions the brand as “the ultimate refreshment”—an intense, dynamic experience delivered both through the product and the way the brand shows up in the world.

‘Turn Up Refreshment’ is the latest campaign that promotes the drink as ice cold solution to beat the heat. Created by WPP Open X, led by Ogilvy and supported by VML, Essence Mediacom, Subvrsive and Ultralight Studio, it will feature immersive experiences, music festival and talent partnerships alongside two main films.

As part of the Coca-Cola portfolio, the brand aims to lead in innovative consumer engagement, using a real-time data strategy to deliver contextual out-of-home ads triggered by heat moments. This includes geo-located proximity media targeting consumers in strategic locations, alongside interactive brand experiences offering a refreshing respite from the summer heat.

Vlad, a Coca-Cola veteran, spoke with Creative Salon about Sprite’s latest campaign—and shared her reflections on career, creativity and the future of marketing.

How did you get into marketing? Did you always want to be in marketing?

I've been in marketing my whole career. I've been with Coca-Cola for 12 years, and most of that time I've spent building brands, especially on the Coca-Cola trademark, until this role on Sprite, which I think is probably the most dynamic and fun role that I've had. I've always loved marketing.

I studied advertising and then I studied business, but I think that the ability that marketing offers to understand human behaviour, understand how your fans see the world, and the needs that they have that are unmet. And then how your brand and your product can play a role is probably the most exciting to me, in addition to being able to do things that are incredible and see them go live in the market, like what we're seeing with with Sprite Summer right now.

It is one of the most innovative summer campaigns that we've done in the brand, because it brings to life technology and real-time data to customise content. It brings to life partnerships in music, and it brings to life live experiences in a compelling way. These are just some of the facets of marketing that really excite me every day.

What have you learned about Coca-Cola? Why is that an organisation that really embraces marketing and creativity like no one else?

First of all, if you think about the history and the legacy of the Coca-Cola Company, it's incredible. Some of the firsts in marketing, whether it's the creation of owned assets like Santa Claus in a way like no one's done before, or innovation. If you think about glass bottles and iconic packaging, or even equipment like the freestyle machine, Coca-Cola has always been on the forefront of the industry. And so, for me, having studied business and marketing, it's an incredible dream to be able to work for an organisation like that.

The other piece that's incredible about Coca-Cola is the global scale, while at the same time, it has a very deep tie to local markets through how we operate. But as you look even at how our marketing plans come to life, there's a very deep, locally relevant tie-in. And everything that we do in Korea, we’re collaborating with one of the biggest rising stars in K-pop. And so while we have incredible scale, which gives us certain benefits, we also have that deep-rooted local connection, which Coca-Cola does better than anyone.

And last but not least, I genuinely think we as marketers have a deep curiosity for how people think and behave, and so we devote a lot of time to that - to being curious, learning, and, based on that, really building plans that hopefully engage better, especially with younger consumers like Gen Z.

Let’s talk about the summer campaign. What does this campaign communicate that perhaps the brand hasn't done in the past?

I say this internally to our team, "Sprite is summer".  If you think about our owned assets, it's almost like the season. Summer is our owned asset. I think the campaign starts from the inside, taking it back to being curious about people, that summer is the most amazing season when you really want to maximise experiences, but sometimes heat gets in the way. So we say, if you want to cool down and run away from the heat, then go inside and get some AC. But if you want to go make the most out of the summer - summer harder and level up - then have a Sprite.

Sprite as your companion really helps you, not only to turn up refreshment, but also to turn up your summer experiences and make the most of them. So that's what makes me excited about this, tying it back to the intensity of the product and the brand, that it's that position about really making the most of your experiences and maximising the season.

Why are brand experiences so important to Sprite and to this campaign?

At the Coca-Cola Company, we're on this constant journey of marketing transformation. It is about acts and experiences, not only storytelling. It used to be much more about storytelling, but now we must be engaging with our fans live in ways that leave a memorable impact and also in ways that ultimately drive someone to try or taste the product for the first time.

So, if you look at ‘Turn Up Refreshment’ specifically, this comes to life in three ways. One is through digital experiences, and there I will highlight two things - one is the contextually relevant content that's served based on how hot it is outside, which is something that we're starting this year. The second is our connected packaging. Through scanning our QR codes, you're able to access interesting and fun summer experiences. So that digital priority continues to be really important for us. Then we have live experiences. For a brand to own summer, we have to be in the places where summer is at its peak, and that includes music festivals, and beaches. So, we do a lot of taking over beaches and creating experiences in places like Southeast Asia, Latin America, anywhere where the geography lends itself to activations and other times we participate in music events and create experiences separately. So live experiences is a really big part of our plan. And then the third thing that's really important is, we know that people and artists have loyal fan bases and it's a great opportunity for us to always be looking at who are the artists, the creators, who embody the brand values, and also allow us to connect with new fan bases that we weren't connecting with before?

When you choose the creators to partner with – what are you looking for and how did you identify them?

Sprite is a brand born and shaped through counter culture. So, originality is really important. The second thing is for someone to embody the Sprite values to be bold, progressive, and authentic. These are really important themes for us as well. And then, of course, having scale and having loyal fan bases that we can engage with and hopefully bring something of value too. That's also really important. So that's usually the filter that we look through when we partner with someone.

Continuing the theme of partnerships - what makes a good agency partner?

Coca-Cola as a company, and then definitely the Sprite brand, is in a great partnership with WPP Open X. I can share some of the things that I look for in a great agency partner. Number one is to continue pushing us in terms of being innovative… Innovation is key. The second thing is speed and a pulse on the outside world, because especially youth culture is constantly evolving. It's always changing.

A few years back, we were talking about the activating the Metaverse. Now it's AI or there are constantly other emerging spaces, so we look for a partner that's able to move at the speed of culture and therefore bring ideas that are relevant and powerful today. Of course, collaboration is super important. And last but, but not least, when working on a brand of this scale, of this legacy and of this growth potential, having a partner that has that global presence, has that scale as well, and can also unlock global activations while matching our local depth, which the WPP Open X model does is key.

Coca-Cola is at the forefront as a brand in terms of how it's been exploring using AI creatively. What was that meant for Sprite? Have you been introducing it into the brand at all?

I think I have to say, ‘stay tuned’. But just to give you a sense of how we have used AI as a company, and what I think shouldn't surprise you to see in the future is that we use AI in daily practices for insights and better intelligence, deeper intelligence. And that is something that we are leveraging for the Sprite brand as well. We have used AI in the past for product innovation, and then, of course, we use AI to curate creative experiences for our fans where they can have more engagement, real-time with our brands.

What frustrates you most as a marketer?

Well, I'm a pretty optimistic person, so I wouldn't say this frustrates me. I'd say something that makes me restless in a good way is that the world around us moves extremely fast, and it's being redefined by how younger consumers, Gen Z consumers, young Millennials, expect to engage with brands, expect to process and engage with content. So that's constantly pushing us to transform, to reinvent, and learn and unlearn. So, that's keeping us on our toes. The outside world and our fans keep us on our toes, for sure. So that's something that I think about constantly - are we being fresh enough? Are we reinventing how we engage based on what our consumers expect from us? Number one and number two is, I have an obsession for growth, and I think about the incredible upside that we have for growth. I often feel like we can't move fast enough. We can't be excellent enough. So, I think that’s something else that is exciting, but it's not frustrating.

What else excites you about the future?

On the brand, it's the reality in numbers and where the future is going. The room for growth is huge, so we've set our ambitions very high. We're not looking for incremental growth. We're looking for transformational growth on a brand that's already huge and iconic. So that excites me a lot because when we as a team are in a mindset of transformational growth, we match our actions to our ambitions. That's a very exciting place to be, on any brand, on any business, and then on the future of marketing

I also think that the rapid evolutions in the digital space is going to be key, and our ability to evolve, transform, be agile, and then at the same time, really understanding how we can meaningfully and differently engage with our fans is in live experiences especially, and by also surrendering some of the creative control that we sometimes hold over our brands, I think is going to be key.

Is there one piece of work out there in the last few months that made you jealous, or something that you admire that you weren't involved in?

There are a lot of campaigns that we watch that make us really excited, that we're learning from but I have to say, I think recently, one of the standards for us Sprite is also looking at what our colleagues on the Coca-Cola brand are doing. I love to see the Share A Coke campaign come back in an iconic way after many years. I love the personalisation and the intimacy of that platform, and I think that's something that really inspires me and makes me eager to bring more of that also to Sprite.