You were about to ask “What did you do?” So I made you a checklist.
Lead the experiential and word-of-mouth strategy for the U.S. launch of Coke Zero, coordinating multiple agencies and major brand partners to create a fan-driven launch that felt organic at a scale Coca-Cola had never attempted.
Coca-Cola wasn’t launching another line extension. They were introducing a product designed to do what Diet Coke never could: get young men to drink a zero-calorie cola without feeling like they were drinking a “diet” product. The stakes were enormous. This was the biggest new product launch in the company’s U.S. history, with media, creative, and experiential agencies all in motion simultaneously. Starcom handled media. Crispin Porter + Bogusky handled advertising. And the experiential agency I was Creative Director at, Escalate, was tapped to lead the initiative, developing the word-of-mouth strategy, building the community platforms, and coordinating across all agency partners. The challenge wasn’t just creative. It was orchestrating a multi-agency machine where every piece had to feel like one coherent brand experience, not a collection of agency silos doing their own thing.
In 2005, brands didn’t have social media playbooks. Facebook was a year old and limited to colleges. Twitter didn’t exist. YouTube had just launched. The conventional approach to a product launch this size was top-down: massive media spend, celebrity endorsements, saturation advertising. But Coke Zero’s target, young men who actively rejected anything that felt like “diet,” was also the demographic most resistant to being marketed at. They didn’t want to be told Coke Zero was cool. They wanted to discover it, try it, and tell their friends. The insight was that at this moment in time, the most powerful media channel Coca-Cola could activate wasn’t television or outdoor. It was people. Real advocates who had tried the product and genuinely liked it, given the tools and the platform to spread the word themselves.
Build the infrastructure for fan-driven advocacy at national scale. Create a private community where Coke Zero’s earliest fans could connect, share, and recruit. Launch a UGC platform that gave consumers creative ownership of the brand’s voice. Then layer it all on top of partnerships with Target, NASCAR, and the NCAA to create on-the-ground sampling moments that fed the online community with real experiences. Make every touchpoint feel like discovery, not advertising.
Word-of-Mouth Strategy and Multi-Agency Leadership.
As Creative Director, I developed the overarching WOM strategy and served as the agency lead coordinating Starcom Media and Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Every concept, every platform, every activation was designed to work as a unified system. The experiential fueled the community. The community fueled the word-of-mouth. The word-of-mouth made the advertising feel like confirmation of something you’d already heard about, not the first time you were seeing it.
Private Fan Community.
Built a private social network for Coke Zero’s most passionate early adopters. Members could share ideas, test experiences, and invite friends, turning product trial into social currency. This wasn’t a brand page with comments. It was a gated community where the most enthusiastic fans felt like insiders, because they were. In an era before brand communities were a marketing category, this was one of the first at scale.
“Coke Zero It’s Possible” UGC Platform.
Created Coca-Cola’s first user-generated content platform, where consumers submitted and voted on “how-to” ideas tied to the “It’s Possible” campaign theme. This gave the audience creative ownership of the brand’s voice, generating authentic content that no agency could have produced and no media budget could have bought. The platform turned passive consumers into active participants in the brand story.
National Partnership Integration.
Designed experiential activations integrated with Target, NASCAR, and the NCAA, creating sampling moments that met the target audience in contexts where they were already engaged and receptive. Each partnership was structured to generate both in-person trial and digital content that fed back into the online community.
Sampling at Scale.
Orchestrated a national sampling program that distributed more than 7 million product samples across 48 markets. Every sample was designed to be the start of a conversation, not the end of a transaction. The sampling strategy was built to convert trial into advocacy, giving each person who tried the product a reason and a mechanism to tell someone else.
