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TOPIC 1: Why did Coca-Cola need to
empower their Brand Ambassadors?

Toolkit Topic:  E-learning platform development for adults

Case Study Title:  Why did Coca-Cola need to empower their Brand Ambassadors?

Duration of Activity: 15 minutes

Learning Outcome: This case present to the learner a real life business problem that was resolved through an e-learning platform for adults.

Aim of activity:

Using an example of Coca Cola, we can demonstrate a full ‘End-to-End’ process of resolving a business problem through the use of an e-learning platform for adults.

Reference:

https://www.spongelearning.com/blog/case-studies/brand/coca-cola/  

Case Study

Whether in their day-to-day work or social situations, employees need to feel confident in communicating the facts about Coca-Cola’s products and challenging misconceptions. Instructor-led workshops meant employees were getting different messages across territories.

A few key challenges we identified:

  • Lack of confidence among Brand Ambassadors
  • Inconsistent messaging across countries
  • Missing opportunities to engage and excite employees

SENIOR MANAGER INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGNER, COCA-COLA EUROPEAN PARTNERS – Justin Whayman

“We needed a fun and engaging way to share brand information and values with employees enterprise-wide across Europe.”

How did Sponge empower Coca-Cola’s Brand Ambassadors?
Loving the brand is central to Coca-Cola’s philosophy so we created the Ambassador Hearts Challenge – a fully responsive, digital learning campaign. Combining facts and fun, it empowers and motivates the Brand Ambassadors to learn the product knowledge they need to boost their confidence.

A mix of quiz-based techniques bring the facts to life through knowledge checks and scenario-based questions. We carefully designed the questions so they replicate situations that the Ambassadors might face in real life, placing real-world context at the centre of the solution. Correct answers win hearts, with totals over 25 added to a Europe-wide leader board. Importantly, the number of hearts per country was converted into a donation to charity. This gamification element links knowledge to reward, introduces friendly competition to motivate and inspires a commitment to community.

The leaderboard was translated into multiple languages so each territory gained maximum engagement from the campaign. The whole experience was developed by our multi-device design experts using the Adapt authoring framework, making it easy for mobile workers to take part. It runs using our analytics platform to display competitor data in a webpage accessible across Europe.

Refreshing feedback and results from the campaign:

3,600 upskilled Brand Ambassadors

Exceeds expectations, with an uplifting campaign capturing the heart of the brand

Completed across 10 countries

Consistent brand messaging across Europe 

Key Take-Aways: 

Coca Cola used a mix of techniques to engage their employees to participate in the e-learnings.

Coca Cola motivated the employees though good experience – responsive, combination of fun and facts, empowering and evoking ‘doing good’ with the charity donations

Do not forget to add / keep the ‘human element’ in e-learning initatives.

Reflection:

Include here a set of questions which adult educators can apply their learning from this case study to their classmates:

  • What type of e-learning does Sponge Learning offer?
  • What type of e-learning did Coca Cola offer?
  • What motivated the employees to participate?
  • Can you find of examples from other companies that used this method for motivating employees as well?
  • Are there other useful methods to encourage an audience to participate in e-learning?