Coca-Cola: Take Out To Help Out

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PHASE: I

The Covid-19 pandemic had caused a lot of businesses to shut down especially in New York City which was most affected of all. In order to help the local restaurants in New York City to get back on their feet, Coke decided to donate meals to Feeding America when people order through Uber Eats from local restaurants. This initiative was named 'Take Out To Help Out'.

It would be displayed at one of the world's most iconic and instantly recognizable places of all time: 'Times Square' in New York City.

Since we already have a series of neon-style designs, we decided to continue with that series.

THE IDEA

Hundreds of artists have worked for Coca-Cola over the years, and pretty much everything seems to have been done in some way, shape or form. So, to come up with something new and minimalistic is an extremely challenging task.

Since it had to be done in neon-style, it meant the design had to be simple, yet clever. I researched into a lot of aspects to see what communicated 'local restaurant' when reduced to basic shapes and form. What I got was a short list of ideas like a take-out box, delivery scooter, neon signs etc. After that, I had to make a connection between that and Coke.

THE PROCESS

If you've ever been to Times Square or seen pictures, you know how many billboards there are and how heavy the visuals of each of those billboards are. That's the primary reason Coke always tries to keep it simple by have bold eye-candy iconic visuals with no words. But since we were specifically going to ask people to help out restaurants we had to incorporate a headline too which is 'Take Out To Help Out'. Here are some of the ones that did not make it to the production stage but are still worth mentioning. These were all created in Illustrator/Photoshop for the purpose of approval.

APPROVED

We wanted the focus to solely be on helping local restaurants which is why we settled on this black version with multi-colored neon which is how local restaurants' neon signs usually are.

Since the board also has side display panels, we made an alternate version which fit the narrow dimensions.

INSTAGRAMERS

I saw people having fun taking pictures with it so I had to include their happy faces here as well. Cheers!

PHASE: II

Initially, there was no plan of having anything else in the campaign apart from the one on Times Square but since the internal team was impressed by the work, they decided to add a second phase which included a NYC-specific Radio and Web Banners.

RADIO

“Take Out to Help Out" : 30

SFX: Sounds of the city and restaurants as we cut from place to place.

VO: New York restaurants are special.

The pizza joint downtown where the owner has been kneading dough every morning for 30 years.

That Korean food truck that knows your order by heart, in English and Korean.

Your favorite pub in the tri-state that always stocks Coke Zero Sugar, just for you.

And we can’t forget the neighborhood deli that knows, you and pickles - yeah, never gonna happen.

We all have that spot that we love and that loves us back.

And those restaurants need our support.

They need us to keep all those special experiences going.

So, take out to help out - from a place that’s close to your heart.

Because Together Tastes Better. Coca-Cola.

WEB BANNERS

These web banners were displayed in articles of various websites which talked about local NYC food.

PHASE: III

As this work kept garnering more love, the plan was now to make this work city-wide. The media buy included a mix of digital and static boards. We also decided that we should include the logos of actual local restaurants thereby making them the hero.