In a first-of-its-kind undertaking, Coca-Cola is using a social media driven travel campaign to tap regular people as “Happiness Ambassadors”. The idea is to have them travel through 2010 and document the entire quest via blog posts, tweets, YouTube videos, TwitPics, and other social media updates.
Currently there is a contest in progress to shortlist the brand ambassadors. Their mission is to find happiness in the 206 different countries that sell Coca-Cola products around the world.
The winning three-person team will begin their journey on January 1, 2010 and attempt to travel more than 150,000 miles in 365 days, visiting each of the 206 countries where Coca-Cola is sold. Their duty is to engage with local denizens and uncover what makes them happy. After that, they are to share their experiences online and complete tasks in each country as determined by online voters.
How the campaign is built
The mechanism is a clean loop: run an online selection process, send a small team into the world, and let the content trail become the campaign. The “media plan” is the itinerary. The “creative unit” is whatever the ambassadors publish that day.
In global FMCG marketing, social content performs best when it is tethered to a real-world mission that naturally generates stories.
Why it lands
It turns reach into participation. People are not only consuming updates. They are voting, shaping tasks, and effectively co-authoring the journey.
It scales across formats without forcing a single channel. Blog for depth, tweets for pulse, video for emotion, and photos for proof. Each piece can travel on its own while still pointing back to the expedition.
It makes “happiness” concrete. Instead of treating happiness as an abstract brand word, it is framed as something you can go find, ask about, and document country by country.
Extractable takeaway. Social media campaigns stay watchable when you design an ongoing mission with built-in episodes, then let audiences influence the next episode through lightweight participation like voting and challenges.
Borrowable moves
- Make the content agenda unavoidable. If the team must travel and meet people anyway, the story supply is baked in.
- Use audience input as fuel, not a gimmick. Let voting shape tasks that create better moments, not just vanity engagement.
- Define the “job” clearly. A simple role title like “Happiness Ambassador” makes the concept easy to repeat and easy to explain.
A few fast answers before you act
What is Expedition 206?
A Coca-Cola project that selects a small team to travel during 2010, visiting markets where Coca-Cola is sold and documenting what people say makes them happy.
Why “206”?
It refers to the number of countries and territories the campaign aims to cover, aligned to Coca-Cola’s global footprint.
What role does social media play here?
It is both the documentation layer and the distribution layer. The journey produces content. The content keeps the campaign alive between milestones.
Why add voter-determined tasks?
It converts passive following into participation and gives the audience a reason to return, because they can influence what happens next.
What makes this different from sending influencers on a trip?
The structure is more like a year-long episodic program with a mission and audience input, rather than a short sponsored travel series.