International marketing 3 ways

These are three Christmas ads for Coca-Cola, a company that knows a thing or two about producing feel-good ads that tug at the heartstrings. But these are three different versions of the same ad, made for different markets.

Italian version:



Tagalog (Filipino) version:



Portuguese version:



All three ads COULD be for any country, however, the imagery looks like an odd mashup of American and European scenery. What fascinates me is that they’d bother making the exact same ad three different ways since no one actually speaks in it.

The first two ads have entirely different casts, but everything else is nearly the same (the food served by the women is slightly different, though their moves in the kitchen are identical). The third ad uses the woman in the kitchen from the first video—though with a Coke Zero instead of a regular Coke—and the woman in the shop wrapping gifts is from the Philippine version—though with a Coke Life. All three boys are wearing red (of course) jackets, and the jackets in the second and third videos are identical.

I found these ads when skimming the videos in the Christmas Adverts YouTube Channel (after I found out there was such a thing…). I probably would never have seen them otherwise. Naturally, I had to share.

And, as I finalised this post, I had a Coke Zero. And a smile.

Update: The original second and third videos I posted were made private, meaning they were no longer viewable or sharable. So, I replaced all three with official versions from the Coca-Cola YouTube Channel, which I probably should have used in the first place, as I have will the other ads I've shared (because they're less likely to go away). However, doing so showed me that this international marketing is even more complicated than it seemed at first.

For example, the “For Santa” card at the end changed into various languages, sometimes with a voice-over in another language. One version, for Macedonia (it’s not embeddable for some reason), changes the song to one in, I presume, Macedonian.

Also, the Coke product given away and the contents of the ice-filled wagon, differ, as might be expected, depending on which products are available in the country. The logo’s appearance at the end also varies, with coloured bottles representing the different products, swirling around. This, too, varies from place to place.

Regardless, I just like these ads, with all their differences.