Coca-Cola Invented a Bottle Cap That Lets You Record an Audio Message for a Loved One

This holiday, a few lucky consumers in Italy will have a new way to communicate with their loved ones—with a high-tech message in a Coke bottle.

The sugar water giant, with help from agencies David and Gigigo, will be selling special limited-edition bottles of Coca-Cola, featuring electronic caps that can record a 30-second message, and then play it back when someone twists open the beverage.

Available at two stores in Sicily, the bottles will also be distributed among influencers in Central and Eastern Europe, as a test case for further sale next year.

A promotional video imagines how they might be used—as a sort of antidote to more elaborate but ultimately abortive attempts to surprise loved ones at Christmas. Rather than pop out of an oversize box, or fall off the roof in your Santa suit, just send a friend you haven’t seen in a while a bottle-gram—to open the freaking door already because you’re standing outside freezing.

The clip veers into a cheesy performance of good feelings that’s overplayed, even for a Coke ad. Then again, it’s the holidays, and the idea itself is fun enough, and consistent with the brand’s past efforts at more personalized packaging—if perhaps less deft a design than widely available bottles with names printed on them.

Regardless, it’s nowhere near as practical as Ogilvy’s “2nd Life” bottle caps from a couple years back—a gift not just for someone you care about, but for the environment too. If only there were a way to get a message into the average empty soda bottle, too—or maybe a hundred billion of them, washed up on the shore, while Sting croons in the background.

CREDITS
Client: The Coca-Cola Company
Product: Coca-Cola
Title: “Message in a Coca-Cola Bottle”

Agency: David
Executive Creative Directors: Joaquín Cubría, Ignacio Ferioli
Creative Director: Ignacio Coste
Art Director: Juan Gutierrez
Copywriter: Nicolas Deferrari
Head of Production: Brenda Morrison Fell
Executive Producer: Florencia Albizzati
General Account Director: Emanuel Abeijon
Account Director: Justina Lioy Lupis
Account Executive: Candela Camacho

Production Company: Landia
Director: Lucas Shannon
Executive Producer: Diego Dutil
Director of Photography: Agustin Claramunt
Wardrobe Stylist: Valentina Luque
Art Direction: Cecilia Guerriero
Post Producer: Luciano Taccone
Editor: Daniel Farman
Postproduction House: Labaque
Sound: Elefante Resonante
Music: Cluster

Agency: Gigigo Group
Chief Executive Officer: Sergio Llorens

Client: Coca-Cola
IMC Director: Jose Antunes
Creative Excellence Director: Paloma Azulay
Senior Creative Excellence Manager: Camilla Zanaria
Senior Shopper Manager: Laura Gurrieri
CIC Manager: Demi Kazasi
Marketing Manager Experiential: Thomas Portenseigne
Senior Brand Manager: Nadine Wagner
Brand Director: Milica Vulicevic Basorovic
Marketing Director: Nadeem