Music in a bottle: How Coke Studio Bharat is adding fizz to Coca-Cola

In its second avatar, the property is relying on creativity, technology and data analytics to move the needle

It has been a few months since Coca-Cola brought back its well-recognised music property, Coke Studio, in India. The beverage major launched it at the start of this year in two avatars: Coke Studio Bharat and Coke Studio Tamil (its first regional edition anywhere in the world).

The last time Coke Studio was in India, as Coke Studio @ MTV, it had lasted barely four seasons. There was simply too much comparison with Coke Studio Pakistan, which started in 2008 and is continuing to have a fantastic run. Also, in a Bollywood-crazy country, where film music dominates, it struggled to stand out.

Times have changed. Mediums have evolved. Coca-Cola has tweaked the formats of Coke Studio accordingly. It is also closely monitoring, through technology and data analytics, how the creative property is being received and the impact it is making.

One of the ways it’s doing so is through the Coca-Cola bottle.

“The biggest real estate that we have as a brand is our bottle or our packs,” says Sumeli Chatterjee, head of Integrated Marketing and Experiences, Coca-Cola India and Southwest Asia. Each bottle has been turned into a portal that can transport a person straight into Coke Studio. The bottle carries a dynamic QR code, which, when scanned, offers an augmented reality (AR), 360-degree experience of the show. This portal also has a karaoke option, where a person can record and publish a song or even audition for the next season of Coke Studio.

To enter the studio, one needs to feed in their phone number. This helps Coca-Cola to not only track the engagement with the property but also how many people picked up a bottle of Coke, and how often they did so.

“More than 80 per cent of the people who walk into this AR experience are below 25 years,” says Chatterjee. “We see them dropping into the platform and also spending a lot of time on it, trying out different things.”

The content is updated every month and the portal changes, she adds. “This helps us to understand consumer analytics – which content the consumer is or isn’t interacting with, and what’s working for whom.” This provides additional data to change the content or media metric. “It also gives us the data for the drinkers, so we know who is coming back to the franchises,” she says.

Deepak Jolly, who was vice-president of public affairs and communication at Coca-Cola India and South West Asia when Coke Studio was first launched here in 2011, says back then there were fewer platforms through which it reached the audiences. TV (MTV India, DD National) was the key medium and some seasons were also aired on Big FM and All India Radio. “Coke Studio Pakistan, meanwhile, was available across channels and on YouTube,” says Jolly. The property, he adds, has to be agnostic to entertainment channels.

This time round, the format is digital friendly, says Chatterjee. The songs can be experienced across devices and platforms: TV, YouTube, or audio OTTs such as Spotify, Gaana, Saavn, Wynk Music and Audible.

Jolly also says that “the brand (Coca-Cola) has to gain from Coke Studio, else it becomes an issue. The last time, it lost its direction in India though we had launched it with a lot of passion”.

Chatterjee acknowledges that while Coke Studio Bharat and Coke Studio Tamil are creative ventures, the money to create them is coming from Coca-Cola’s advertising budget. So, these properties are expected to deliver “in terms of what we call the weekly-plus audiences, which means the number of audiences who are picking up the bottle on a weekly basis,” she says, adding, “But the lens through which we are looking at it is long-term because you can’t expect a song to deliver in the exact same way as an ad would. We are not looking at every song as an ad.”

Audience or consumer engagement is the key metric through which Coca-Cola is measuring the impact of Coke Studio. “How many people subscribe to the channel; how many searches happen; what is the percentage of views for the song – patterns are gleaned through these to understand whether a song has worked or not,” says Chatterjee. Consumer feedback, whether on the content (song) or the medium, is also assessed. “And then we start planning the next song.”

That’s another thing. Unlike in the past, not all songs of Season One are being released simultaneously. “From the time we launched the first song to now, our media planning has changed,” says Chatterjee.

“When we saw the journey of the first and second song, like ‘Holi Re Rasiya’, we realised that a lot of song discovery was happening through the shorts format, such as reels,” she explains. So the team changed its approach to figure out how it could leverage shorts as a strategy instead of looking at the format as an outcome of its strategy.

Extensive social listening is also part of the game. People either like a song or they don’t; there’s no mid-way, says Chatterjee. “So, their feedback becomes critical, not just for this season but also the next.”

However, Coke Studio is unlike a traditional ad model, where the variables – duration, cast, storyboard – are pretty much fixed. The artiste sits at the centre of it and any tweaks to the creative composition might not be acceptable to him or her.

“While we are obviously using data and social-listening tools to monitor, the artistes have their own ecosystem that gives them the feedback,” says Chatterjee. She adds that the experience is that the artistes, too, want to understand what’s working or not for the song and how to make the property a success. Besides artistes, other partners such as executive producers Universal Music India (UMI) also come together for a monthly status check.

The concern over Bollywood’s dominance was put to rest early on. It was concluded that the growing regional influence in Bollywood – in terms of artistes, beats and storytelling – would work in favour of Coke Studio.

Then came the question of drawing people to the property, “since music is not surfed; it is something you step into when the algorithm figures out your preference. So, you cannot rig it; you have to fit in,” says Chatterjee. Analysis showed that Coke Studio’s regional focus would work for it.

Earlier, the songs were more in the zone of fusion; now, it is more about expression, says Chatterjee. Regional perspectives have taken centre stage. Traditional instruments such as the tumbi or yazh, a harp-like string instrument that was used in ancient Tamil music, have been brought into the studio.

And along with the songs, a 360-degree experience has been created in the form of storytelling about the song, the instruments and the artistes. Coke Studio Bharat has also decided to turn the spotlight on a new-age India that challenges stereotypes, such as those around gender. One example is the Kashmiri song ‘Kya Karie Korimol’ about the bond between a bride and her father as they prepare for her wedding feast.

For Coca-Cola, Chatterjee says, two things are important as a strategy: “breaks” that people take during the course of the day and “meals”. The beverage company wants to be part of both. A key strategy is also recruiting the teen audiences. “And music is a key enabler for us to double-click this strategy,” says Chatterjee, adding, “We will be hosting concerts (in the latter half of the year) so that the experience becomes phygital or physical.” Merchandise around Coke Studio is also planned.

It all boils down to: Is Coke Studio moving the needle for Coca-Cola?