Indian creativity going global?: A 2023 Coke Brazil campaign seems to be inspired by a 2019 Swiggy activation

Coca-Cola's innovative 2023 Christmas activation, "Magic Audios" popped up on social media recently for its innovative use of artificial intelligence technology and WhatsApp. The campaign tapped into WhatsApp in Brazil, the world's second-largest market for the messaging platform. Leveraging insights into Coca-Cola's significant chatbot user base in Brazil and WhatsApp's popularity, the campaign aimed to strengthen connections with customers, explained the agency behind the campaign - Ogilvy.

Participants were challenged to record audio messages conveying Christmas wishes while drawing the Coca-Cola bottle silhouette and those who succeeded were awarded prizes. An AI system analyzed audio waveforms, swiftly classifying both form and content, and responding to users promptly.

Over a two-week period, the campaign generated massive participation, with over 12 million seconds of audio recordings and 400,000 Christmas messages sent. It attracted nearly 100,000 new unique users to Coca-Cola's WhatsApp presence. This creative approach reinforced Coca-Cola's brand presence and fostered meaningful interactions during the festive season in Brazil.

This innovative campaign that deployed AI-tech for Coca-Cola was shared by Storyboard18's editor on social media recently, prompting Indian users to highlight that this campaign seems to be inspired from a five-year old Swiggy campaign. Viewers were quick to draw comparison between Coca-Cola Brazil's Magic Audios campaign from 2023 with Swiggy's 2019 Voice of Hunger activation for a specific reason, as pointed out by one of the minds behind the campaign.

But first, more about the 'Voice of Hunger'.

Challenging foodies on Instagram, Swiggy, India’s largest food delivery platform and its agency Dentsu Webchutney took interactive campaigning to an all new level in 2019. The brand launched a fun-engaging consumer campaign #SwiggyVoiceofHunger, where foodies were urged to recreate the shape of their favorite food using the voice note feature on Instagram.

The campaign consisted of 5 challenges – consumers were expected to recreate the shape of a Kebab Skewer, Nacho, Shawarma, Pancakes and more using the voice note feature on Instagram. Whoever completed all 5 challenges stood a chance to win a year’s worth of food vouchers from Swiggy.

At the time, Ashish Lingamneni, who was AVP Marketing at Swiggy said “Contests are a fun way to engage with and understand the pulse of consumers. The unique nature of this campaign has resonated exceedingly well with foodies across the country, with food lovers voicing their hunger literally at an average of 50+ DMs per minute! We are absolutely delighted to see the #SwiggyVoiceofHunger campaign dominate the consumers’ mindspace. The success of this campaign pushes us to serve our discerning consumers more engaging and delightful content”.

Swiggy had received a whopping 60,000+ voice notes for its challenges on Kebab Skewer , Nachos and Shawarma. Social Media influencers Rohan Joshi, Kanan Gill, Barkha Singh, Ashish Chanchalani, Niharicka Singh, Srishti Dixit and many more were seen passionately voicing their hunger by recreating voice notes. Brands like Airtel also joined the fun banter creating their own versions of Nachos.

India - a global creative powerhouse

The campaign won several awards including the coveted Cannes Lions. The agency won a silver for Swiggy’s ‘Voice of Hunger’ campaign in the Social and Influencer category. A first for any Indian agency.

Sanket Audhi is a founding member of Talented, one of the most exciting and breakthrough new agencies to come out of India in years. The agency was founded by former Dentsu Webchutney executives and teams, the same team that created the Voice of Hunger campaign.

Audhi shared, "Us Indian creatives are no strangers to comments insinuating that our idea was "first done in UK/USA/AUS/EU/somewhere in the middle of the arctic ocean" As an Indian ad nerd, this is a great day. Here's an idea from the West that's taken more than a whiff from a campaign my team and I executed 5 years ago - Swiggy Voice of Hunger - which won big across Cannes Lions, One Show and the likes in 2019. More special since it was our first Lion. And India's first Social & Influencer Lion!"

He added, "PS: Wasn't planning on posting about this but made a promise to those in my DMs who sent me the Coke activation asking "broooo isn't this Voice of Hunger?!?!"

Watch the Swiggy activation here.