Coca-Cola CMO Manolo Arroyo on WPP, AI and a new era for media

And its model efficiency has been equally robust. Based on Kantar, Coca-Cola is constantly one of the crucial helpful manufacturers on the planet, discovering new methods to develop in a really mature class with robust headwinds. In recent times, Coke has been capable of develop its meaningfulness and salience within the USA, resulting in stronger pricing energy as well as the ability to surpass Pepsi. BrandZ knowledge reveals how constantly the model has each created demand (it’s ranked primary within the gentle drinks class in 90% of markets) and made it accessible to devour (accessible to over 50% of drinkers in each market). Immediately, Coke ranks alongside Nike and Crimson Bull for the standard of its promoting on a globally weighted foundation, largely due to the consistency of its executions. 

That comes at a value. Not too long ago, Coca-Cola revealed its world advert spend stood at $5.146bn in 2024, an all-time excessive. That was up 2.7% from $5.01bn in 2023.

Fueling that efficiency is a advertising and marketing group that has undergone an entire overhaul over the previous 4 years. And on the heart of the transformation is EVP and world chief advertising and marketing officer Manuel ‘Manolo’ Arroyo, a virtually 30-year veteran of Coca-Cola who has overseen the restructuring of company relationships, media technique and artistic output. 

“The market is recognizing that we’re undoubtedly on the high when it comes to efficiency,” he says. “We’re managing to drive income, quantity and transactions. Clearly, advertising and marketing and innovation are the key drivers of the expansion of our firm. Our firm is a advertising and marketing firm. It’s just about the guts and the soul.”

From fragmentation to focus

When Arroyo got down to modernize the perform in 2021, Coca-Cola’s advertising and marketing ecosystem was sprawling and sophisticated. The enterprise was working with roughly 6,000 company companions globally, whereas the vast majority of its multi-billion-dollar media price range was allotted to conventional channels. Arroyo wished fewer companions, deeper integration and a shift in direction of digital-first execution at scale.

That ambition led to the consolidation of Coca-Cola’s global advertising account into WPP and the creation of Open X, a bespoke unit designed to handle the model throughout markets and disciplines. 9 studios have been established in key areas, housing a mixture of Coca-Cola staff, WPP employees and specialist companions.

“It’s a advertising and marketing manufacturing unit,” says Arroyo. “There are greater than 2,000 staff of Coca-Cola and greater than 2,000 staff of WPP […] and in the end it’s enabled us to maneuver from an organization that in 2019 was investing near 75% of our paid media on conventional TV, to an organization that’s going to finish up this 12 months placing 70% of all our paid media on digital, significantly social and influencer led, advertising and marketing. For us, it’s our new TV.”

WPP’s stewardship of the worldwide enterprise has coincided with a period of intense pressure on holding companies. WPP has felt that the majority acutely, with its share worth tumbling amid shopper losses and important restructuring. Arroyo additionally made the choice to move Coca-Cola’s North American media business out of WPP to Publicis earlier this 12 months, which solely heightened scrutiny.

The turmoil in the end led to a management shake-up. CEO Mark Read departed in September to make way for Cindy Rose, a former Microsoft govt. 

From Arroyo’s perspective, proximity to WPP staffers in its 9 studios has bred a stage of understanding and given his groups a sympathetic view of the pressures going through the advert business, from margin compression to accelerating technological change. Regardless of the introduction of rival Publicis into the combination, Arroyo is unequivocal in his assist for WPP’s route underneath new management and optimistic in regards to the work it is going to proceed to ship. 

“WPP could be very bullish and I’m an enormous advocate and supporter of the route that [Cindy Rose] is taking within the business. We’re actually proud of the partnership. They’re deploying for us proper now the following iteration in media.”

A brand new fashionable media strategy

Consolidation has additionally delivered important effectivity features. Promoting productiveness has develop into a central pillar of Coca-Cola’s development technique, enabling the corporate to attain much more with its document ranges of spending.

Arroyo is now what the approaching years will ship. He calls the following part of that evolution a “fashionable media” strategy, which builds on the structural adjustments of the previous 4 years and pushes the group additional in direction of data-led, extremely segmented execution.

It is going to be deployed in its high 40 markets globally on the finish of this 12 months and in additional than 76 markets by the tip of the primary quarter subsequent 12 months.

For a enterprise that was not born digital and doesn’t promote direct to shoppers, the complexity is immense. Coca-Cola operates throughout greater than 50 distinct channels, from supermarkets and comfort shops to airways, cinemas, stadiums and seaside kiosks.

Trendy media, as Arroyo defines it, brings collectively shopper, shopper, retailer, media, content material, creator and e-commerce knowledge right into a single atmosphere. This contains first, second and third-party knowledge, geolocation, transactions, loyalty playing cards and content material indicators from platforms and creators around the globe.

“Take into consideration a large, huge boiling pot the place you set all of that collectively in a single place,” he says. The aim is to maneuver from broad, one-size-fits-all plans to ultra-segmented development audiences, outlined right down to postcode stage however executed at a world scale. For a corporation promoting 2.3bn drinks a day throughout 30m shops in 200 international locations, this represents a step change in how development is pushed.

“This contemporary media strategy begins with knowledge on the scale and permits us to carry all of these a number of knowledge units in a single single place for one given nation. After which take into consideration a design of development audiences, whereby going to see that we transfer from one plan for any given model to an ultra-segmented plan that basically goes to these shopper teams and shopper playing cards and segments that matter,” he explains. “We’ll perceive the drivers of consumption, the motivations, the triggers of consumption shifting ahead, not solely from a media funding standpoint but additionally bringing the content material, the alternate options of content material, in a contextual, related means that may drive the conversion into transactions.” 

Coca-Cola has already been pushing the boundaries of what hyper-personalized communication, at scale, seems like. Take the return of ‘Share a Coke.’ Greater than a decade after its unique launch, it was activated throughout greater than 10bn bottles and cans in 120 international locations, that includes over 30,000 domestically related names.

The marketing campaign contributed to single-serve transaction development and helped Coca-Cola Zero Sugar ship its fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit quantity development.

“It has accelerated 5 instances the expansion of our single-serve packages. Single-serve packages are essential as a result of that’s the place a lot of the shopper engagement, significantly with Gen Z, occurs,” he says. “It’s the best development within the final 5 years.” 

Past gross sales, the info dividend is equally important. “Simply that initiative added to our database 20m first-party knowledge factors around the globe,” Arroyo provides. 

On embracing AI

Synthetic intelligence underpins a lot of this transformation, however Arroyo is cautious to border its function clearly. “It’s very clear that AI has phenomenal, unbelievable purposes in the entire advertising and marketing course of, finish to finish, from insights to creation to manufacturing to media planning to media shopping for to efficiency monitoring.”

Inside Coca-Cola’s advertising and marketing organisation, adoption is already widespread. By way of a mix of formal coaching and on-the-job studying, 85% of the corporate’s 2,000 world entrepreneurs now frequently use ChatGPT. That determine will increase when you think about numerous different AI instruments on its roster. 

“You’ll be able to assist our groups do means higher and sooner advertising and marketing if they’re actually capable of leverage the ability of human genius and human creativity and AI functionality on the identical time.”

For Arroyo, the emphasis is firmly on augmentation fairly than substitute. “It’s in regards to the ‘and’ versus the ‘or’ and we’re solely firstly of that journey.”

AI’s skill to floor psychological, sociological and emotional insights at velocity, for instance, is reshaping how artistic effectiveness is known. However Arroyo sees an everlasting function for human judgment. The standard of outcomes, Arroyo insists, nonetheless is dependent upon the standard of human considering, from prompting to interpretation and demanding judgment.

“I don’t see a world with out the human enjoying a major function in crafting, in creating, in curating the output.”

Regardless of these assurances on the worth of the human contact, Coca-Cola’s use of AI has not been with out controversy, significantly round its Christmas marketing campaign. From criticism that its use produced a clunky and inconsistent ad to extra excessive requires a boycott of the model over its experiments with the tech, Coke has been on the sharp finish of backlash. However Arroyo is dismissive of claims that the work underperformed.

“We acquired a 5.9 level rating in System1 [for our Christmas ad], which is extraordinarily excessive,” he says in protection. “And Kantar disclosed that this 12 months it’s the second-best advert in Christmas throughout all classes.”

For him, the talk doesn’t make him query AI’s use in artistic executions, but it surely does reinforce the significance of transparency, ethics and belief. “We proceed to construct on our journey of studying, studying and creating our capabilities on AI.”

As one of the crucial influential entrepreneurs on the planet, Arroyo sees a part of his function as encouraging friends to embrace know-how responsibly. Belief, ethics and integrity stay non-negotiable.

“I see my function in encouraging my very own friends to embrace know-how, together with AI, however doing that in a accountable and clear means.”

Manolo Arroyo has been nominated for The Drum and the World Federation of Advertisers’ International Marketer of the Yr Award 2025. Find out more about the accolade and this year’s nominees.

Earlier winners of the award embrace Asmita Dubey, chief digital and advertising and marketing officer at L’Oréal, who received for 2023, and Marcel Marcondes, world chief advertising and marketing officer at AB InBev, who won for 2024.