Coca-Cola Ultimate League of Legends Interview

June 16, 2023 at 2:43pm
By Jason Stettner

Interview with Jacques Blanchet, Integrated Marketing Experience Sr Manager - The Coca-Cola Company

A staple I do in all interviews in order to start things off is to ask that you elaborate a bit about your work for those not familiar with it?

Jacques: I’m Jacques Blanchet, I work at the Quebec Coca-Cola company. I’m the Senior Integrated Marketing Manager in Canada. My role is to make sure that all of the global programs, like with the Ultimate Flavour are tailored to the Canadian market. Tailored for English and French, making sure it works for French consumers.

Today we’re chatting about the Coca-Cola partnership with League of Legends, can you tell us about the setup?

Jacques: At the beginning of the year we partnered with Riot, we did some limited edition collection cans showcasing the game. Now through our Coca-Cola Creations program, which is the innovation platform that we have. We level up a flavour with the Riot team that is all about +XP, which is the experience points in the game.

This flavour is supposed to be exhilarating. All of our creations flavours, we never say what the flavour is. It’s really a tailor made mix in collaboration, leveraging passion points like music, this case it’s gaming. So it was really developed by marketing; R&D, the Coca-Cola and the League of Legends teams to really showcase the flavour of the game.

There are some rather interesting bottle designs, could you go over the inspiration for the designs and which types of Coca-Cola feature them?

Jacques: The bottle design is the marriage of League of Legends and Coca-Cola. The bottle leverages the colors of League of Legends. If you look there’s a golden crest from League. It’s black and various shades of gold. It’s an innovative twist for Coca-Cola, we’ve gone really out for it. It celebrates the fusion of the two iconic brands.

It’s the ultimate crest with the magical blue glow from the game. We called our local script in the way we write Coca-Cola. So it’s a unique expression of that script inspired by the Nexus Crystal in the game. So really, the idea was to leverage the iconicity of Coca-Cola, but also everything that is recalled by the game by the players in playing League of Legends.

For those playing League of Legends, what perks will players receive when they gather one of these Ultimate drinks?

Jacques: The journey is on every 500ml of Ultimate that is available in stores, there’s a QR code. That gives you access to the creations hub, which is the platform as we call it. The idea and the way we do our marketing more and more, is in providing experiences. There are two key things that players will have access to. It’s the “Ultimate You” digital experience, a Coca-Cola first.

Fans will get to see themselves in their ultimate form and watch their player journey unfold with a digitally immersive experience. We’re using progressive technology, gamers can scan their face to become an avatar on a quest. We provide the experience of developing your avatar through that digital experience. Selecting their own hero while tasting the +XP taste.

There’s also going to be Ultimate in-game missions and emotes. Players will be challenged to put their League of Legends skills to the test via a series of in-game missions that unlock limited edition Ultimate emotes. So they’ll get a chance to bring their emote to the real world using our ultimate emote generator. So those are the two main experiences, by scanning the QR code on the Ultimate packaging.

From a Canadian perspective, where might one be able to find one of these drinks to enjoy?

Jacques: Mainly in instant consumption locations such as convenient stores and large stores, mainly in the fridges being ready to drink.

When it comes to gaming partnerships, such as with League of Legends how does something like this come together and does Coca-Cola actively seek out partnerships within the gaming industry?

Jacques: The idea of the creations platform is to leverage different passion points. We started the year with a partnership with music with Rosalia. We wanted to leverage the passion point of gaming and gamers, we really tried to find a partner that had the same values and was as iconic as Coke in the gaming industry.

Riot was a great partner and the ideal partner for that. We have other creations that will drop by leveraging other passions and interests for the Gen Z. Which is our main target for that. I wouldn’t say we’re looking for partners, we already have great partners and want to nurture that partnership and collaboration.

What’s the process like after setting up the partnership, from both a creative and promotional stand point?

Jacques: The process is really thorough in the sense that it started at the drawing board. With our R&D team and marketing team, and the Riot team really doing some tests. Figuring out the exact flavour of what we think is an exhilarating flavour that expressed the +XP experience in the game and that’s what we want to convey.

So after months, months and months of work. Testing, developing, marketing. So everything from R&D to market was developed with Riot so that both brands were really put through. Respecting both of their values and everything they have in common.

Are there any other interesting things going on with Coca-Cola this summer that you would like to highlight?

Jacques: This summer, the other program which is out of our Coca-Cola Creations platform is our Coke Studio platform which is around the passion point of music. So it will be on all of our Coca-Cola classic and Coca-Cola zero sugar bottles. Kind of the same consumer journey from a general standpoint.

We have QR codes on the bottle which gives you access to a digital hub where you can win some prizes, you can see artists performances with some global artists and more local artists that we are sponsoring. We just announced a partnership with Canadian Jessie Reyez. We’ll be part of some festivals all around North America. In our case, in Canada we’re partnered with Evenko and also the Calgary Stampede in Calgary where we have stages.

We’re going to be providing experiences around the Coke Studio experience. We’ll have experimental experience leveraging AI to provide an experience of shooting your own video clip and your own album cover. That’s the main biggest program. After the summer, this fall we’ll have a new creation that we will launch that’s leveraging another passion point of interest that I cannot talk about for now. That will be super interesting as well.

Lastly I would like to leave a spot for you to say something or go over anything I might have missed during the interview?

Jacques: Head to Coke.ca to find our digital hubs and for the launch of Ultimate. I invite you to go there. The Coca-Coca Ultimate flavour is available in the classic or the zero sugar version. Whichever you prefer or like.

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