Coca-Cola and HP How HP Indigo turned an idea to reality EXTERNAL Graphic Solution Business May 16th

HP Indigo - Coca-Cola News Release HP helps bring to life Coca-Cola’s biggest-ever personalized brand campaign across Europe Record-breaking HP Indigo Digital Press productivity achieved to produce 800 million high-quality personalized labels in 32 countries

HP Indigo - Coca-Cola The brand - Coca-Cola, Marit Kroon, Marketing Manager Europe “The Share a Coca-Cola campaign is incredibly complex, and packaging plays a critical role in its success,” said Marit Kroon, marketing manager, Europe, Coca-Cola. “The ability to personalize such a high volume of labels using a combination of conventional printing with HP Indigo Digital Presses, and achieving the quality and consistency that Coca-Cola requires, opens up new possibilities for creative campaigns moving forward.” The PSP - ESHUIS, Peter Overbeek, Managing Director During the months of continuous printing, the HP Indigo WS6000 series Digital Presses have proven to be exceptionally reliable, achieving record productivity and press uptime of 86 percent,” said Peter Overbeek, managing director, ESHUIS. “With such a strong European network of PSPs using HP Indigo digital presses, the opportunities for brand owners like Coca-Cola are endless.”

From an idea to bottles on the shelves

How it all started ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X8Bd3-G6IU In 2011, Coca-Cola Australia had the idea to run a campaign called “Share a Coke”. Their surveys showed that number of people still had not tasted a Coke ! They selected the 150 most common first names in the country and printed the wrap around labels of their single serve bottles. They asked one of their local printer to execute the job, which had obviously to be done digitally. The execution was on a UV Ink Jet Dotrix, in CMYK, followed by a lamination. They got a very good business result, despite an end quality not matching their standards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X8Bd3-G6IU

It gave the idea to Coke Europe End 2011, Coke’s European marketeers suggested to run similar project in Europe. At that time around 70 millions labels were considered. Gradually, the local country marketeers added their own “little” needs and what was initially meant to be a pilot project became a pan European one. It turned to be a request from 32 countries, for 2 bottles sizes as 0.5 and 0.375 liters, and 3 types of Coke: Regular, Zero and Diet. 150 most common first names per country from the target group (13-30 years old) in almost 30 different languages and 5 different alphabets. All this consolidated brought an excess of 10000 different artworks to prepare, and ended up at almost 800 million labels to print ! Finally, a mix of all the names was required to be at any given point of purchase without having to shuffle the physical labels or bottles. Printing the labels digitally was the only way.

The Coke Operating Model The working model - Coca-Cola produces the syrup and makes the specs for the bottle and packaging - Coca-Cola supplies marketing support to their customers Coca-Cola’s customers are the bottlers whose job is to convert the syrup into a drink, pack it, and sell it to the distribution channels. Amongst their duties lies the packaging which they outsource to local qualified printers. The printers producing for Coca-Cola bottles are equipped with high speed, large format gravure and flexo presses, and work according to technical specs defined by Coke initially. They deal with extremely high volumes, and remain within the substrates, inks, varnishes, processes and quality controls which have been set, tested and approved by the local bottler. They simply cannot change anything without putting the bottler’s activity at risk.

How was it done? Because of the volume demand that kept on growing, the solution was to go for a hybrid model that would print the static part in conventional, and the variable in digital. HP Indigo made a special mixed color for the famous Coke Red. That colour is now the reference for all their network of printers. Rolls from conventional printer Entering into the HP Indigo WS6600 Press Overprint of the names on the HP Indigo WS6600 Rolls from the digital printer ready for shipment

How it was done (1/3) Printing the static part at a conventional printer on a given special substrate

How it was done (2/3) Overprint of the names on the HP Indigo WS6000 Entering into the HP Indigo WS6000 Press HP Indigo digital press WS6000 Rolls ready for shipment to conventional printer for finishing

Application on the bottles How it was done (3/3) Applying protective varnish and slitting in rolls ready for applicators Application on the bottles

HP Indigo made it happen Coke had a great idea HP Indigo made it happen