Dubai-based McCann Worldgroup agency launched a new campaign for Coca-Cola, celebrating the month of Ramadan with a call to end labels and prejudices as part of its larger “Let’s take an extra second” campaign.
The campaign includes cans with the Coca-Cola label removed and the message “Labels are meant for cans, not people” on its reverse side. FP7/DXB also created a video, in collaboration with Memac Ogilvy, in which they invited a diverse group of men to meet and talk to each other in a dark room where they could not each other, therefore avoiding prejudiced knee-jerk reactions. The group included a heavy metal musician, an avid home cook, a student of Emirati Heritage and the Arabic language and personal branding specialist Loy Machedo. When they switched on the lights, the participants found that the people they spoke to differed greatly from what they had imagined, challenging their preconceived notions and prejudices. They were then invited to reach under their chairs to find the “No Labels” Coke can, which made the point of the exercise abundantly clear.
The campaign very much falls in line with the larger “Let’s take an extra second” effort, with the video recalling The Cyranos McCann’s contribution in May. It’s also part of the trend of agencyies crafting long message-based efforts aligning brands with a cause. FP7/DXB’s label-less cans, meanwhile, are an attention-grabbing way to spread the message beyond those who will sit through the 2:30 ad, acting as a conversation starter.