The Happiness Metric - Coming to a Campaign Near You

This past January, Coca-Cola completed a year-long social and global initiative called Expedition 206. It sounds like something you'd expect to see coming to your neighborhood IMAX theatre. No, Expedition 206 was not intended to be the next Hollywood blockbuster. It was engagement on an epic scale. The brand selected three random Joes and Janes to act as Happiness Ambassadors. This involved travelling to 206 countries and spreading the gospel according to Coke through various social channels. The idea of a big brand leveraging Happiness Ambassadors might seem a little hokey. After all, every social media user has the potential to be a Happiness Ambassador. That's the benefit of earned media. But what makes Expedition 206 rather impressive is that it was actually a hyper-local, hyper-social campaign.

Coke's Happiness Ambassadors journeyed to countries like the Ukraine, the Dominican Republic and Bermuda - regions with little to no social network presence. Some locations readily adopted social media while others had a hard time generating followers. But that did not stop Team Happiness from spreading Cheery Coke messaging. Social actually became social - word of mouth communication, one on one chats, and even sincere invitations to people's homes for dinner.

Yes, there were significant digital results. Expedition206.com and the big three social networks - Facebook, Twitter and YouTube - drove over 650 million impressions. But whether Coke meant to or not, the brand brought a renewed emphasis to the human element of social connection. Understandably, measuring handshakes would be nothing short of a logistical nightmare. Social media likes and tweets are rightly becoming the brand value measurement standard for digital campaigns. But in an industry that utilizes social networks to drive users to offline locations with increasing regularity, human happiness must count for something. Coke certainly thinks so. Expedition 206 The Sequel, anyone?