Gist : Pepsi worked hard to fortify their ski resort hold in the west. While Coca-Cola had vending rights to the mountain, Pepsi had secured all the restaurants at the base of those mountains—which had much higher volume and branding potential. Coca-Cola needed a way to break through and do something exciting and unexpected for this crowd. But, with little to no space to do it since traditional media wasn’t relevant.

INSIGHT:

• Instead of using the flagship brand, we used Cherry Coke not as just another Coke flavor, but as its own brand with its own crowd—snowboarders.

• We leveraged that perception to show Cherry Coke as the new flavor in town and not for the masses, but for the niche , the cool kids.

• We proposed ways Cherry Coke could use icons of skiing and show them in the new light of snowboarder’s view.

• We dressed out lift chairs like comfy love seats. We wrapped lift support poles in crash pads that looked like Cherry Coke cans. We put snowboarder tool boards at rest stops on the mountains.

• We gave out Cherry Coke in lift lines. We had snowboarders roaming to give free samples.

Results:

• Those on the mountain (skiers/snowboarders/employees) looked forward to the Cherry Coke “what will they do next” ideas

• Brand preference increased “on mountain”

• Cherry Coke brand achieved separate “brand” status vs association as just another flavor of flagship (brand tracking)