Coca-Cola Launches Europe’s Largest Ever Music Promotion With iTunes

Coca-Cola announced that it is teaming with iTunes on Europe’s biggest music promotion ever, spanning 17 European countries and running from May until the end of August. As part of the 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 Coke Zero this summer. The on-pack promotion will also offer customers the chance to win free iPods and attend some of the 100-plus Coke and iTunes sponsored summer concerts across Europe. The promotion will be launched at the Cannes Film Festival with a special live performance from Faithless, who have recorded an exclusive track for Coke and iTunes and collaborated with designers Paranoid on a limited-edition, aluminium Coke bottle.

“Coca-Cola has a long and rich heritage in music, from memorable advertising tracks to grassroots support to big live events. In Summer 2006 we started an innovative new partnership with iTunes,” said Chris R. Burggraeve, group marketing director for the European Union Group. “Coke+iTunes aims to reinvent the ways young people create, listen to, and experience music every day. Thanks to Coke+iTunes, European youth will enjoy this Summer 2007 the biggest pan European music experience ever. And what better way to build bridges among European cultures than through music?”

“iTunes is the world’s most popular online music store selling 58 songs every second at a rate of 5 million tracks a day,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We’ve already had great success working with Coca-Cola over the past year and this new pan-European initiative gives music fans across Europe the ability to download free music all summer long.”

The Coke and iTunes summer concerts will see big name headline acts playing with newer acts from Coca-Cola’s grassroots programme that allows undiscovered artists to upload their music on Coke’s website( www.coke.com/music) . All of the concerts will be recorded and made available as downloads and podcasts exclusively on iTunes. Previous co-branded concerts have included Elisa (Italy), The Fratellis (Denmark), The Rapture (Ireland) and Deichkind (Germany). The 17 countries where the concerts will take place are: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.