Coca-Cola is known for one very specific shade of red.
But across thousands of small neighbourhood shops in Mexico, years of sun had created something different.
The Coca-Cola storefront shades that once started bright red had slowly faded.
Some became pink. Some orange. Some dark red.
In total, there were 12,700 different faded shades.
Normally, this is the kind of thing a brand would fix. Replace the old material, put up the correct Coca-Cola red, and move on.
Coca-Cola did the opposite.
The faded signs became the campaign
Instead of throwing the old material away, Coca-Cola Mexico turned it into a campaign called “Shades of Red.”
The faded fabric was collected and reused across billboards, bus shelters, merchandise and other outdoor advertising.
Suddenly, something that looked like old and damaged branding became the main creative idea.
But that's not what makes the campaign special.
These shops have carried Coca-Cola for years
Many of these shades belonged to small local stores, or tienditas, that have been selling Coca-Cola in their neighbourhoods for years.
These stores are an important part of Coca-Cola's business in Mexico.
So those faded shades weren't simply signs that had spent too much time in the sun.
They showed how long these shopkeepers had been carrying and selling the brand.
Every slightly different red had its own history.
Instead of removing that history and replacing it with something perfect, Coca-Cola decided to celebrate it.
There's a lovely marketing lesson here
Brands spend a lot of time making sure everything looks perfect.
The right logo.
The right colour.
The right font.
The right guidelines.
But sometimes, the imperfections tell a better story.
Coca-Cola could have replaced 12,700 faded storefront shades and nobody would have noticed.
Instead, they looked at something they already had and asked:
What if this isn't old branding? What if this is our history?
And that turned a simple replacement job into a campaign people wanted to talk about.
Sometimes the imperfections in your brand tell a better story than the perfect version ever could.
Written by
I’m Tanmay Tarte, a community builder at Scribble and an engineering graduate from Priyadarshini College of Engineering. Over the years, I’ve worked across community management, content, hosting, and social media, mainly within the Web3 and creator ecosystem space. Outside of work, I’m a huge sports enthusiast and can genuinely play cricket all day, every day.
