Sports | Wednesday 12 August, 2015 4:01 am |

The Coca-Cola Company recently extended its award winning ‘Share a Coke’ campaign with a spin off entitled “Derby Al Riyadh” in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Launching the campaign on social media, Coca-Cola released a video on YouTube featuring two iconic Saudi football legends who are at the heart of the infamous football club rivalry that exists in the nation: Sami Al Jaber from Al Hilal and Majed Abdallah from Al Nasr. Through this campaign Coca-Cola hopes football fans will put aside their differences and come together to share a Coke, inspiring moments of happiness.

 

The Coca-Cola Company has been refreshing The Kingdom since 1993 and is aware of the passion for football that embodies Saudi culture and understands that it is a shared love for the sport that fuels the rivalry between Al Nasr and Al Hilal. With this video, Coca-Cola invites the fans of each team to become new friends by highlighting the power of inclusion through Sharing a Coke. 

 

“Derby Al Riyadh”, documents the inherent competition between the two clubs and it also emphasized that fans can still have a mutual reverence for each respective teams’ players. This sense of camaraderie used to be buried under an intense feeling of competitiveness, but when the fans witnessed their two favorite players, Sami Al Jaber and Majed Abdullah from opposing teams sharing a Coke with each other, it encouraged them to look past that competitiveness and find a sense of sportsmanship that had existed all along. According to one superfan, “At the end of the day, we’re all brothers and football can’t divide us.”

 

 Tolga Cebe, Marketing Manager Coca-Cola Middle East, commented, “We wanted to showcase that while on the surface football rivalries in Saudi Arabia seem to be extreme, deep down it’s all about a common passion for football. By tapping into that passion we wanted to remind the public that when you share a Coke, you share moments of happiness, no matter which football club you support.” 

 

‘Share a Coke’, which first launched in Australia in 2011 invites fans to find their names -- and the names of family members, friends, coworkers and people they’d like to know better -- on cans of Coca-Cola across the region. The campaign has since made its way around the world, spreading happiness in more than 70 countries to date.