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Beyond Sponsorship: How Coca-Cola Turns Cultural Moments Into Business Growth
How does one of the world's most iconic brands decide which cultural moments to enter? And how can major sponsorships go beyond visibility to drive real business growth?
In this episode of Breaking the Mold, Lee Roth, Co-Founder of The Actionists, sits down with Jorge Luzio, Head of Marketing for Coca-Cola in North America, to explore how one of the world's most iconic brands approaches cultural relevance, sponsorships, and consumer engagement.
From the FIFA World Cup to America 250, Jorge shares how Coca-Cola goes beyond traditional sponsorships to create memorable experiences, strengthen brand love, and drive commercial impact. The conversation explores the importance of long-term partnerships, consumer insights, and turning cultural moments into opportunities for growth.
CMOs, marketing leaders, brand strategists, sponsorship and partnership teams, and marketers looking to turn cultural moments into meaningful consumer connections, stronger brand relevance, and measurable business growth.
00:00 – Meet Jorge Luzio and his role at Coca-Cola
03:34 – How Coca-Cola selects the right sponsorships and cultural moments
06:55 – Turning sponsorships into measurable business growth
10:12 – Why consistency and long-term partnerships matter
12:33 – Coca-Cola's FIFA World Cup Panini collectible activation
15:30 – Partnering with MrBeast to amplify the FIFA World Cup campaign
16:05 – Why great sponsorship strategies start with business objectives
21:00 – Behind Coca-Cola's America 250 "Drink America" campaign
@0:00 - Lee Roth
Welcome to the latest edition of Breaking the Mold.
My name is Lee Roth, co-founder of The Actionists, and I am thrilled to have Jorge Luzio, the head of marketing for the Coca-Cola brand.
Jorge is a client of ours at The Actionists, and more importantly, now a good friend, so I'm really thrilled to welcome him to the show.
Jorge, welcome. Tell everyone about yourself and your role at the Coca-Cola company. Hi, Lee. Great to see you again.
@0:25 - Jorge Luzio
Excited to spend some time with you. Yeah, my name is Jorge Luzio, and I've been in the Coca-Cola company for the last 20 years, always in marketing.
Before that, I spent some time between Accenture and other CPGs back in my hometown, Venezuela. And yeah, my role at the Coca-Cola company is to lead the Coca-Cola trademark, original taste, and all the big campaigns that such a massive brand have in North America, inclusive of the U.S. and Canada. So really excited to chat about those programs this year. We have lots of things in the roster, starting the first half of the year with America's 250 and FIFA, and it's been a great year so far.
So looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, me too.
@1:19 - Lee Roth
I mean, to your point, you've been really busy with some pretty amazing programs between FIFA, 250th anniversary. Tell me, what was it about the World Cup and really America's anniversary that made it right for Coke to enter those cultural conversations?
Well, you know, they're very different platforms, very different programs.
@2:39 - Jorge Luzio
Well, you know, they're very different platforms, very different programs.
FIFA and America 250, they at the same time meet the same strategic test for us, right? So it's like how we can capture cultural moments that are capable to create connections with our consumers, with our customers at scale, right?
So on one hand, you have FIFA, which is the largest sports event in the world. And this year we were hosting in the three countries of North America.
And it's experienced an amazing momentum in the United States as a sport, soccer, right? So half of Americans say that they're interested in soccer and soccer is growing as a passion point.
So all the excitement that we've had around North America and hosted World Cup, like creates a unique opportunity for us so we can connect with consumers and bring them something that they're really already passionate about or they're discovering at this time.
@3:34 - Lee Roth
Hey, let me ask you, when you're deciding like you're Coca-Cola, so everybody wants your dollars, right? Everybody wants your sponsorships.
Do you have a criteria to determine what's the right sponsorship or what are the right cultural moments that are right for the Coca-Cola brand?
@3:48 - Jorge Luzio
Yeah, without going into much of the details of our strategic criteria for that, but definitely we evaluate opportunities both.
I would say like in three lenses, like, and this is more like my philosophy on marketing, which is the why, the what, and the how, right?
@4:08 - Jorge Luzio
So if you think about the why is like trying to understand is the property or is the asset aligned with the purpose that you have as a brand, right?
We're here to uplift the human spirit. So it's like how you can elevate that human experience through connection, through optimism, through shared moments that are shared values that both FIFA and the sport and Coca-Cola has, right?
The second piece is like the what. It is what do we deliver, right? So for that, it's like does that asset help you or the program helps you to solve a problem or a challenge that we have in our business, right?
So in marketing, we usually try to do one or three things like either recruit new consumers or increase the frequency with the existing consumers or how we can improve the portfolio mix and revenue, right? So it's very important for you to understand out of the program, what is the role that has in your growth algorithm for the brand?
And I think the third level is like how, right? It's like how you can activate in a way that creates value for, I always talk about the three Cs, right?
Our consumers, our customers, like how you can generate the right traffic, the right commercial hooks for them in our company, right?
So it's like, again, contributing for that growth algorithm. So I think that great sponsorships don't live in a logo or in the jersey, but it's like how you can come through life to the different experiences that you offer, whether in commerce or in the retail execution, or with the content that you provide to the consumer so you can then really engage with your brand, right?
@5:53 - Lee Roth
Jorge, love that because I can't tell you how many times I've seen sponsorships because I like football or I like basketball, so I sponsor them.
I think you really have a nice formula, the why, the what, and the how, and really thinking about the values of the properties with the values of your brand and whether it's going to drive the business and connect with consumers.
I think that's a simple but really powerful and effective formula in evaluating these criterias. So all you marketers listening, take note because that's a really good lesson.
So on the business front, right, often if you're a marketer, right, and you're going to your board and saying, I want to sponsor X, there's a lot of questions about whether or not it will actually drive the business.
But as you were just saying, Coca-Cola has seen a ton of success dating back from before my time at the Coca-Cola company with these properties, with these marquee sponsorships.
How have you been able to ensure that the sponsorships really drive the business?
@6:55 - Jorge Luzio
Well, I think, again, like being really clear. Or what is your growth algorithm? What is the value that you want to create?
And we are obsessed about growth and value creation, right? It's not about visibility. Visibility, by the way, we are a very visible brand, right?
The most pervasive probably brand in the world. So for us, I think that every sponsorship must work across, like, different dimensions.
Like, first, brand love, right? And the affinity of our brand. So is this asset strengthening the emotional connection that our consumers have with Coca-Cola and makes more Coca-Cola relevant, makes it more accessible, like tapping into the drivers of affinity that our brand have?
The second piece is, is it driving action to our consumers? So the platform that we have can help you to drive participation, to drive engagement, to drive purchase or trial of your brand, right?
The third level is the customer value. Again, like thinking about the consumer, the customer.
Does that platform create excitement and growth opportunities for your partners?
@8:07 - Jorge Luzio
We have a massive retail partnership, food service partners. Do they have, again, the right hook that provides the right structural demand?
Does that provide the right tools for them to create those displays to help them to gain share? Right. And I think that's it.
That's really important because it goes to the fourth aspect of that. It's like, does it have the right commercial impact?
So is it ultimately translating into volume, revenue, household penetration, all the metrics that we have, frequency or shared growth?
So I think the mistake that many brands have is that they're stopping at awareness. Right. So it's like, this Splashy, big platform, how they can help you to drive, make the right reach, the right awareness. And we really think about an entire ecosystem.
So this is a flywheel, how you can sweat the asset to both work in the culture that you're trying to connect with consumers at retail, in the digital space, and also in the experiential environments at the point of purchase.
So we have this sense of retail attainment, like all of our campaigns and the displays are meant to create also an experience with our consumers.
So that's very important. So when all those elements work together, I think that sponsorships become really a growth engine for you, rather than just like an expense that you put in your bottom line.
@9:54 - Lee Roth
Honestly, and I'm not just saying this because it's you I'm talking to, I don't think anyone does this better than Coca-Cola.
When you really put your force behind something, and not just think about the consumer, but all of your partners, it is a force to be reckoned with and it's really impressive on how you execute.
@10:12 - Jorge Luzio
And, you know, I think the other day I was reading about the sponsorships and when preparing for this interview and other interviews that I have had on the matter, it's also about the consistency, right?
So we've been partnering with FIFA and with the Olympics and such a long partnership. Like, so it's about like how you can keep working on the things that work for the brand, like sharpening the connections, like sharpening the assets that we have within the asset.
So we have amazing assets within FIFA, World Cup, like the trophy tour, right? Now we have the association of Panini that we activated this year.
Like how you can get better and you can actually create more sense of intimacy with your consumers with all the sub-assets that we have.
It's something that is about the repeatability and like learning from each of the experiences. And every four years we have like huge after-action reviews to understand what worked, what didn't work, what are the things that you can improve. So the repeatability side of that is also really important.
@11:27 - Lee Roth
I love that point about consistency because I think one of the greatest challenges facing a lot of companies, especially CPGs, is the rotation of brand managers.
And when you have such high rotation, that means that the passion pillars of the brands very often change. But when you have consistency, it gives you more of a right to insert yourself in the cultural conversations in the right way.
You can't do that if you're just joining something for the first time. It's your consistency and what you've added to the game through time that allows you to do those things.
All right, so here's a fun question for you. Out of all the pieces of content that you created in the last six months to a year between 250 and FIFA, what was your favorite and why?
@12:33 - Jorge Luzio
I think, well, on the FIFA side, I would say Panini on the America 250s, the collectible cans that we have.
@12:35 - Lee Roth
What's Panini? Talk to us about what that is for our viewers.
@12:40 - Jorge Luzio
So Panini is an album, I'm from Venezuela.
So in Latin America, I remember collecting it. Like you have like little stickers that you put in the album and it's collectible and you trade it with your friends.
And it's like, who finished it first? So it was a big question mark for us in the United States, whether this would have worked.
Because yeah, the sport, soccer is like growing exponentially here. And we had this campaign that, you know, aim for the soccer fans. But also for the sport fans, but also for total populations, how we can bring in, now that we have the sport in our backyard, this amazing asset, how you can reach all the different audiences.
But Panini is something that was really for those like really hardcore countries. So how we can bring it here and make it relevant for an audience that we're not familiar.
So we were really, really curious about how this would work, but I really love this asset. And what I love the most was the simplicity of that.
So we took a behavior soccer fans that love for generations collecting Panini and those that, you know, were familiar for that.
And we brought that into everyday Coca-Cola purchase. So what we did was to hide FIFA World Cup stickers behind like a peel back label in our 20 ounce bottle So we transformed that bottle into.
@14:00 - Jorge Luzio
A moment of discovery, right? So it was just, it was not the advertising of that, but the participatory side of that for the consumer side, for the customers about the transactability and bringing traffic and bringing novelty to the set.
So the idea is that fans could collect or trade or compare and engage. And for us, it was generating this intimacy with the asset and with the sport that only Coca-Cola can do experience embedded in the bottle.
So I really loved it, and it really helped us to drive transactability, to drive direct connection with our customer.
We really hit the mark, and we invested heavily behind that, and it really paid off, right?
And we also partnered that with how to, how to communicate that with local creators. And to, you know, to have the right awareness of both the activation of Panini because it was not very well known and it was really successful.
@15:13 - Lee Roth
Oh, that's interesting.
How did you choose the right creators to ensure the success?
Well, were there people you were working a long time? Were there new people you want to bring into your ecosystem?
@15:22 - Jorge Luzio
So we had a whole ecosystem of costume creators for that that helped us to reach the different audiences. We have a roster of them and we really linked it of people, not only that were passionate about the sport, but also that could help us to amplify that idea.
@15:28 - Lee Roth
I know you said you have a criteria to look at different creators and that you use some on your roster.
There might have been one big one that you had that you worked with. Do you want to tell us who that was and the kinds of things that you did together?
Yeah, we partnered with Mr.Beast
@15:30 - Jorge Luzio
Yeah, we partnered with Mr.Beast and we were super excited about it. And you would think like, what has to do Mr. Beast with a Panini collectible for hardcore soccer fans, right?
But it was all about generating the awareness of the album itself because we don't have the right accessibility for everyone to understand what does that mean.
So he really helped us to amplify that. We had an amazing ecosystem, not only with him, but also how we multiply that, his effect, but with billions of impressions to help us have accessibility of that incredible activation that we have with Panini.
@15:39 - Lee Roth
So that's a great person to partner with. You know, at least in the Roth household, he's probably our biggest influencer that we all love. His videos are awesome.
So I think that's a great activation for the Coca-Cola brand and probably a fun one to be a part of and develop.
@15:44 - Lee Roth
All right. So now that you've done all these things and you've given a lot of great advice already, but is there any other pieces of advice you'd give marketing leaders who are just thinking about a strategic property and that could drive their business?
Is there any like one? So if you're going to do this, make sure you know X.
@16:05 - Jorge Luzio
Yeah, I think it always starts with the business problem, right? Not the property. I think that too many companies fall in love with the partnership before defining what success looks like for them.
So I think being clear about the role of the investment you're supposed to play is extremely important, right? And then set up like, are we trying to recruit new consumers?
Are we trying to increase loyalty and consumption? Are we driving premiumization? Are we building brand meaning? Then once you have that clarity, build your activation around your objectives, right?
So the second piece, I think, is to think long term. Again, like do the repeatability of that. Is it something that we're going to do one off?
And it's good to experiment, right? Right. But if you're thinking on your long range planning, like. Think of assets that can help you to drive that repeatability, right?
So I think like thinking long term is important, at least for a big company like us. And I think the most valuable partnerships compound over time because consumers begin to associate the brand and the property together in a way that is meaningful for both of the brands, right?
So FIFA is a good example of that. We've been partnering for decades. So it's about consistency and credibility, right?
@17:33 - Lee Roth
Jorge, the first thing you said is why we work so well together, which is how are you going to drive the business?
Not whether or not you want the property, what's your business problem? And then can that property help you solve that business problem?
@17:48 - Jorge Luzio
I think that one of the things that I have learned, and we're doing it a lot, not only on platforms like FIFA, but in general, but different campaigns is leveraging four aspects. One is to have the right insight, you know, with your consumers.
So in the case of FIFA, it's this emotional roller coaster of the sport that can give you exhilarated. So it's like how you can create those experiences for the consumers that are tapping into a human insight, then mix it with innovation.
And that example of Panini is an example of that, right? How you can bring something that is not old, but it's like so different that your brand investor and we call it only Coke can do experiences.
Then like mixing it with intimacy. And we are obsessed right now at what we call the averaging at scale, right?
So we have, and with technology and AI, like we can really go and really understand what are the hardcore funds in where and like almost by a zip code, right?
So it's like how you can create platforms. I don't know if you saw in the matches, we had the cups of Coca-Cola.
So we printed the Coca-Cola cups with the match that was in that event. So it requires like a lot of technology to make all these prints. So we have like almost 2 million cups. But it really helped us to create like amazing social conversation online to drive that level of intimacy.
And the last piece is about integrating that in an ecosystem that really drives the business. So all the packages that we activated, all the displays, again, like retail tainment that we had at the point of sale with our key customers are really important.
So also think about how you can create platforms or programs that really speaks to yourconsumers and really are integrated.
@20:06 - Lee Roth
Those are great lessons. And I think, you know, it's funny.
The first thing you said was insight, which sounds obvious, but when we were looking at all the commercials, Pio and I went through them all, most of them were generic.
It was insert celebrity, insert soccer, insert brand. With Coke, you found a real good, you found a great insight with your commercial.
You found the tension between the can, the product, and the moment in the sport, which was awesome because it actually felt like an authentic moment for you to be entering rather than insert generic celebrity and insert generic brand and insert kick in the soccer ball.
And I think forget about these, like whether it's Super Bowl or FIFA or any major sponsorship, it's all most brands are using the same tricks.
You found something that was authentic to Coca-Cola, and so hats off to you guys because you're not seeing that as much as you should be.
@21:00 - Jorge Luzio
I know we focus a lot of the conversation around FIFA World Cup, and we didn't touch that much in America 250, but I think that following that same thinking and framework, if you think about the inside of the America 250s, drinking America, right?
So it's, regardless who you follow, regardless what do you believe, like it's a year to celebrate in America, right?
So drinking America was an insight that really helped us to encompass that and to encapsulate that. The innovation that we had is this collectible mini cans by state.
So I don't know if you've seen it, there's beautiful. So you have like every single state, like 50 and 52 plus actually, because we incorporated Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
And intimacy because we created this ecosystem to actually support the communities to have like more than 50 murals. So we had like about a billion packages out there.
It was a really beautiful campaign that actually we used to sort of the average at scale. We had it at the same time, two massive programs, FIFA World Cup and America 250 at the same time.
So they were both really, really successful for our business in the first half of 2026.
@22:28 - Lee Roth
You know, I'm glad you brought it up because America 250, while should never be controversial to be celebrating, was actually quite controversial this year, right?
And it was a very hard line for people to walk on, depending on what side of the equation you are.
But you did it very well. And I think you did it because, one, the association between America and Coca-Cola is so tight to begin with.
But you just did it by reminding us what the American values were to begin with. And I thought it was...
Quite beautiful, what you ended up doing. Yeah, we're really excited about that campaign.
@23:06 - Jorge Luzio
Yeah, we're really excited about that campaign.
@23:08 - Lee Roth
It felt like, to me, felt like the Coke that I've known and grew up with was back in a very powerful way and so really great job to you and the team on that.
So my last question, and this is one I ask every person that comes on Breaking the Mold, is if you could take on any issue in the world and use marketing to help solve it, what would be the issue and how would you use marketing to help solve it?
@23:33 - Jorge Luzio
Hmm, I think it's a tough one because you could have the typical ones, right? Education and poverty and like eliminating.
And I think that if I, and I think it's something that I'm very proud about, like what we do here in a way, but if I could use marketing to help solve any issue, would be like.
The access to opportunities, right? So people talk a lot about access to education or, and by the way, education is incredibly important, right?
But I think that there's something more fundamental about, you know, giving access to possibilities. And possibilities could be something like mental, could be something physical, could be something access to physical stuff.
But I think that just like showcasing and giving a point of view for people to think about opportunities or experiences or portraying role models can expand, actually, what's possible of people's in their minds.
So I think marketing should be about that. When you have a real point of view, think about what we're trying to do is to uplift the human spirit is very powerful, right?
So, and we try to embed that in every single thing that we do. Marketing is one of the most powerful storytelling platforms that has been created, right?
So how you can use that to shape aspiration, to influence culture, to make future feel tangible for people, I think is important.
So I don't know if it's an issue and probably it's like too philosophical.
@25:22 - Jorge Luzio
But giving access to possibility and to make you think differently about certain aspects of your life, I think it's important because in a way, I think that what we do in Coca-Cola is to democratize inspiration, right?
Connecting with people, to stories, to experiences, but you can do it even more. So in marketing, I think we have the responsibility to tell those stories, right?
To mentor experiences, to have those educational opportunities in a different way so we can have our consumers. And the audiences that we reach to imagine different futures for themselves, right?
@26:07 - Lee Roth
That's beautiful.
Yeah, you're advertising hope and you're showing the path how. Thank you, Jorge.
Jorge, thank you for coming on Breaking the Bold.
This was a great episode and so insightful. I really hope a lot of marketers watch it because I think it will help a lot of people.
@26:26 - Jorge Luzio
You know, I have a big heart for you guys. You are great partners and I'm looking forward to keep talking to you and connecting with you.
@26:35 - Lee Roth
Likewise.