Mother beats McCann to core Coca-Cola task

Coca-Cola Great Britain has appointed Mother to develop a campaign for its core brand for launch in the new year, putting more pressure on Coke’s former lead agency McCann-Erickson.

Mother will take adapt the “real” strategy Coca-Cola Inc has launched in the US for the UK market.

The project forms part of what was an £11m spend on Coca-Cola’s core brand last year.

A spokeswoman for Coca-Cola says that the company no longer has an “agency of record”, but works with a variety of partners, including Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, Vallance Carruthers Coleman Priest and McCann.

Mother already works on Coca-Cola brands Lilt, Dr Pepper and Oasis. The agency pitched ideas to Coca-Cola for the core brand at the beginning of the year. The UK Coca-Cola campaign running this month was developed by the Madrid office of McCann and features a busker on a train breaking into the Europop hit Chihuahua. The latest US ad for the “real” campaign has been developed by Berlin Cameron/Red Cell and features actress Salma Hayek leaving a restaurant to eat a taco and drink Coke. It has been produced in English and Spanish and will run on US mainstream and Spanish-speaking TV stations.