The Coca Cola Company has enlisted the aid of Wieden+Kennedy, Portland to create an integrated marketing campaign exploring the history and mythology behind Doctor John Stith Pemberton, the inventor of Coca Cola. The Secret Formula campaign launched with the above video bears many of the trappings of an alternate reality game, with links leading to artifacts across the web, with the promise of expansion out into the real world in the near future. And while it is relatively easy to draw parallels between this campaign and Wieden+Kennedy’s previous Go Forth campaign for Levi’s, on first impression it appears as though Secret Formula will be a more passive experience.
According to the campaign’s The Secret Is Out There video, someone is trying to steal Coca Cola’s secret formula: and based on past experience, Pepsi can be ruled out as the culprit. In order to figure out who is after the formula, players will have to learn more about the two people who know the formula as well as the drink’s inventor, Doctor Pemberton, who has recently discovered twitter, although it seems as though the good doctor had some trouble adjusting to the application at first.