Fanta has unveiled a digital campaign targeting teenagers from mainland China between the age of 12 and 19. With the new online app published at www.Fanta.com.cn the brand intends to provide fun and entertainment and keep the students learning while playing an online game. This local campaign is a part of global ‘Less Serious’ marketing platform and was developed by Ogilvy & Mather Group Shanghai.

The Coca-Cola Company is taking an unusual step by asking U.S. retailers to give back the shelves that hold Coca-Cola products. Coca-Cola is developing a family of 100 percent recyclable merchandise display racks for use in grocery and convenience stores in the U.S. The first GIVE IT BACK ® racks are free-standing units made of easily recyclable corrugated cardboard and designed to communicate sustainability to shoppers.

Tree-planting movement is already joined by a number of brands including Avon, Timberland, Finlandia Vodka, IKEA, Odwalla and many more. The idea of providing consumers an opportunity to give back to nature while buying something natural was recently adopted by another brand, Coca-Cola’s Honest Tea, which partnered with the National Forest Foundation to kick off its Bag to Tree reforest campaign across the USA.

On April 4, Pepsi launched the second year of its Pepsi Refresh Project, calling on people from across the United States to submit bold ideas that have the power to move communities forward, focusing on the categories that America cares about most: Education, Communities and Arts & Music. In addition to its standing grant categories, Pepsi will announce a new Pepsi Challenge each month in the form of a question that Pepsi will challenge the public to answer with creative ideas. This month, Pepsi is challenging fans to channel their love of music to drive social change with its first Pepsi Challenge by asking, “How would you rock the house for a good cause?” 

Beginning March 31, the Coca-Cola Perfect Harmony collaboration invites American Idol fans to help write a new song for Coca-Cola that will be performed during the show’s season finale May 25 at 8/7c on FOX. Fans can visit www.AmericanIdol.com where they can listen to the opening segment of a song penned by multiplatinum singer-songwriter Taio Cruz.

Coca-Cola’s flavoured beverages FUZE brand is launching its first advertising campaign focusing on the fun which blending different things together can bring. The campaign dubbed ‘It’s Better When You Mix Things Up’ was launched across a range of media platforms including TV (two adverts were created), billboards, print, digital, retail, mobile and social media elements in the U.S. on April 1, and will be running throughout summer.

Fanta creates more play for consumers with the brand’s most unified and largest global marketing campaign to date. ‘Less Serious,’ launched in 2007, will now reach teens and moms worldwide in regions representing 90 percent of the brand’s global sales volume in 2011. The fun has started in many markets around the world and is kicking off in the United States on March 30, with the broadcast debut of Fanta’s ‘Chase’ commercial on ‘American Idol’ on FOX.

Beginning this week, some of the biggest stars in NASCAR will turn laps at a much slower pace than usual, as they hit the racetrack on foot alongside fans for the first of five Coca-Cola Family Track Walks. Throughout the 2011 season, Coca-Cola will give thousands of fans the opportunity to experience a NASCAR race weekend from an amazing vantage point—on the track itself—at five different stops on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series™ schedule.

Coca-Cola concluded probably the largest experiment in the brand’s music history—its 24-hour live session with Maroon5, during which the band were writing and recording a new song. Throughout the unique event, which was steaming live online, the band’s and the brand’s fans from all around the globe were supporting the guys in the studio by tweeting with hashtag #WithMaroon5 (the messages popped up on the interactive wall in the studio).