The Coca-Cola Company
Showcasing how an iconic beverage company is bolstering the U.S. economy
The Challenge
While The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC) has a broad global footprint, it also has a rich legacy as a true American company and economic engine that was not fully understood in Washington. Armed with the results of a recent study that revealed the profound economic impact of the Coca-Cola system with its $58 billion in contributions to national and local economies and the 854, 000 U.S. jobs the company supports, TCCC wanted to set the record straight.
To highlight TCCC’s critical role in the American economy, and educate policymakers about the hundreds of thousands of Americans whose jobs are directly created or supported by the system, TCCC turned to POLITICO Focus.
The Strategy
POLITICO Focus created a three-part custom content series to showcase TCCC’s profound legacy of empowering people and communities, while amplifying the findings from the recent economic study. The series, ultimately housed on a single content hub and landing page, brought TCCC’s data to life and highlighted the company’s impact through a human-driven lens.
To achieve this, Focus launched a bespoke Q&A featuring the president of Coca-Cola North America, providing policy influencers with direct insights from company leadership in a highly consumable, traditional Q&A format. Drawing on data from the economic impact report, the piece introduced TCCC to POLITICO readers as a homegrown, uniquely American company that is a critical engine for the U.S. economy.
This introduction set the stage for two human-driven photojournalism experiences that followed, and deepened audience fluency around TCCC’s data by connecting real-world faces to the company’s impact. For these more intimate profiles, Focus worked with TCCC to source two long-time employees who exemplified TCCC’s individual empowerment and community growth message through their diverse experiences and personal successes within the company. This cross-state campaign included a visit to Atlanta, Georgia, where the team spent the day with a machine operator at a bottling plant, and to the small town of Orla, Texas, for a ride along with a truck driver who delivered Coca-Cola products to retailers in the remote oil fields of west Texas.
Focus engaged local photographers to capture candid, “on-the-ground” images and portraits, and integrated original audio interviews and natural sound for the audience to hear directly from these individuals and give voice to their stories. The photography was showcased through two immersive, photo-driven digital article experiences that, along with the Q&A, culminated in a robust content hub, “A Formula for Economic Growth,” that served as a dynamic landing page and engaging messaging vehicle for the overall campaign housed on POLITICO.com.
The articles and digital hub experience included comprehensive cross-platform promotion on the homepage and across the site via targeted high impact custom advertising units, paired with targeted social media. Additionally, the content series — and key economic data points — were brought to life even further through the development of a splashy interactive booth activation and lounge featured prominently at a POLITICO Live economic policy summit event sponsored by TCCC in Washington, DC. The buzzy half-day event included critical on-stage conversations moderated by POLITICO journalists that unpacked the state of the U.S. economy with TCCC executives, presidential administration officials, regulators, and federal policymakers.
- Photojournalism
- Executive thought leadership
- Human-interest storytelling
- Event activation
The Results
Through this campaign, TCCC was able to amplify their timely economic impact report, while natively aligning their thought leadership and human-centered messages with the utility-driven insights and credible storytelling of POLITICO journalism.Overall, the three-part campaign,, including the Q&A, and the two photojournalism experiences, “Distributing Economic Opportunity Across the U.S.” (focused on Atlanta) and “Finding Economic Mobility Behind the Wheel” (focused on Texas), surpassed all key performance goals.
- Increased time on page — among D.C. DMA audience across all three pieces
- 3X — higher page views than average (Q&A, Texas)
- 22 seconds — higher time on page than typical benchmark (Georgia)
Reaching the Right Audience
Amplified by native and social promotion, POLITICO Focus engaged critical audiences, who, compared to the average POLITICO audience, were:
