In June 2009, two designers, Ryan Yoon and Harc Lee, founded studio called Ryan Harc and designed a colourless Coke can with sustainability advantages that they called Naked.
The original design won the Biennale Internationale Design award at the end of 2010. Coke showed no interest.
This is what Coke was missing out on:
- The can uses no paint, which can introduce pollutants into the environment when they are printed and when they are broken down for recycling.
- The Naked can saves the energy and paint required to manufacture coloured cans.
- And it reduces energy and effort because there is no need to separate toxic paint from aluminium in the recycling process.
Ryan Harc is now a London design studio with an impressive array of awards under its belt, and news emerged on 10 July that Coca-Cola is considering producing its can. What is uncertain is where the news originated. The studio also achieved a wave of editorial coverage for the cans in 2012.
We do know that Coca-Cola stepped up its efforts to release environmentally friendly and economically viable products following the release of its sustainability report 2011-12. And it has begun to make grand statements in the form of ad campaigns.
Coke’s Plantbottle was launched in 2009. In June this year, Ogilvy New York gave it its first advertising campaign, a series of four optical illusion print ads and posters carrying the message, “Plants make us Happy.”
A year before, Coke launched a bottle made of ice into Colombia, accompanied by a full media campaign and a lot of news and trade media coverage.
The limited edition bottle was created by a Coca-Cola and Ogilvy & Mather Bogota partnership. It is shaped liked a regular Coke bottle and with the logo etched into the ice.
So that customers aren't left with cold hands, it comes with a red rubber band that slips around the bottle, and can be worn as a bracelet after the ice melts.
Coca-Cola made the ice bottles by pouring micro-filtered water into silicone moulds and freezing them at -13 degrees Farenheit. The ice bottles were shipped empty. Servers filled them with soda right before handing them over. They were promoted as being more environmentally friendly (waste-free) although more refrigeration was needed to produce, store and deliver them.
The ice bottles were only available in Colombia, but vendors reported selling them at a rate of “around 265 an hour”.
