The Coca-Cola Company's Case for Creative Transformation

In 2013, the Coca-Cola Company was awarded Creative Marketer of the Year by the Cannes Lions Festival (known as the "Oscar of Advertising") for the first time ever in history and nearly 50 years after the Festival's inception. Just one year before that, Jonathan Mildenhall, Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing Content and Design Excellence, orchestrated the development of Content 2020, a blueprint for how all Coca-Cola's branding content ranging from traditional TV commercials to viral and social media content should be procured, built, tested, and distributed in the next 10 years. This case provides a unique opportunity to "look under the hood" and understand how the main principles of Content 2020 work and infer how the beverage company achieved its most prestigious marketing award of all time.