Coke Zero - Sans Sugar
Insight
Great taste can’t always be sold.
Coke Zero has made a lot of progress in recent years convincing a broader audience to try its product. But there’s still a large amount of people who refuse to believe they’ll enjoy the taste.
Instead of trying to convince people through traditional messaging, Coke Zero let the bubbles, fizz and condensation of the product speak for itself.
Idea
A tasty typeface, sourced from the product.
To craft key visuals, Coke Zero used cutting-edge AI technology to develop a custom Sans Sugar font, made entirely of real product elements.
A custom-designed typography used Neural Network Object Detection to find naturally-occurring letters amongst the fizz, condensation and bubbles of Coke Zero.
To develop the typeface authentically, 100,000 photos of liquid were taken through a glass and formed into various shapes. Altogether, more than 40 million liquid elements were scanned over 500 hours.
As the imagery was collected, it was compiled into a dataset, where custom software then recognised letters from the alphabets of hundreds of different languages.
The flexible custom typography allowed Coke’s creative teams to produce print, out of home placements and digital advertisements for dozens of different markets around the world.
The flexible custom typography allowed Coke’s creative teams to produce print, out of home placements and digital advertisements for dozens of different markets around the world.
Impact
Taste that speaks for itself.
Coca-Cola’s brand marketing team praised the innovative approach for having the product itself at the core of the communication.
AKQA is a design and innovation company that employs over 6,500 professionals across 20 countries. Named Digital Agency Global Network of the Year in Campaign’s 2023 Global Agency of the Year Awards, AKQA was also awarded the Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Digital Craft in 2023, and the Grand Prix for Design in 2021. In 2023, AKQA was recognised as a winner in Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Awards. AKQA also won Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas in 2021, and 2022 and led Gartner’s research into global marketing agencies in 2021.