You Must Love Coke

"You Must Love Coke" celebrates the passion, rituals and fierce loyalty that define matchday in rival stadiums where the color red isn’t just disliked — it’s banned.

Developed by WPP Open X, led by VML and Grey, and supported by Ogilvy PR and WPP Media, the campaign uses innovative optical illusions to bring its iconic red to rival football stadiums. The campaign respects the intensity of supporter traditions while finding a completely new and visually surprising way for Coca‑Cola to show up for fans that honors local rivalry culture.

In some rival football stadiums, the color red — synonymous with Coca-Cola — is banned due to its association with opposing teams. This presented a unique challenge for Coca-Cola to make its presence felt in these environments without disrupting the traditions and loyalty of football fans.

The campaign drew inspiration from the deep-rooted passion, rituals, and fierce loyalty that define football culture, as well as the unifying emotions that bring fans together on matchday.

Coca-Cola reimagined its iconic red branding by using optical illusions that contain no red at all. Instead, the designs relied on perception-bending color tricks that allowed fans’ brains to generate the Coca-Cola red themselves. This approach respected the intensity of rivalry traditions while introducing a culturally sensitive and visually surprising way for Coca-Cola to appear in blue-team territories.