What I did
I was the core ideator and ran the campaign: turning forwarded Diwali greetings into cards made for one person, and steering how the AI platform, the live billboards and the creator rollout came together.
What was broken
Every Diwali, phones fill up with the same forwarded greetings: the same diyas, the same fonts, sent to everyone. The festival is about the people you love, but the wishes had turned into copy-paste.
What we noticed
People don't want a better template. They want a card that feels like it was made for one person. In 2023, generative AI made that possible for anyone, not just designers.
What we made
#MagicWaaliDiwali turned Coca-Cola's Create Real Magic platform into a Diwali card studio. People picked from icons out of Coca-Cola's archive and Diwali's own visual language, like diyas, rangoli, auto-rickshaws and the contour bottle, and AI built an original card and a personal message around them.
It ran on OpenAI's DALL·E 3 and GPT-4, making it one of the first large-scale brand campaigns built on DALL·E 3. Sam Altman called it out on stage at OpenAI's first DevDay.
A tiny, non-AI tribute. Make a card for one person instead of forwarding one to everyone.
May your year be as bright as your group chat on Diwali night.
How it actually happened
Making a card took three steps. Finished cards could be shared on Instagram and Facebook, and they also appeared in real time on digital billboards at Haji Ali and Vile Parle in Mumbai and Cyber Hub in Gurugram.
Creators including Kusha Kapila, Vishnu Kaushal and Neha Doodles got things started, and pre-roll and connected-TV spots ran on Disney+ Hotstar during India vs Netherlands at the 2023 Cricket World Cup. The platform went live across India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan.
The bragging bit
“Coke is launching a campaign that lets its customers generate Diwali cards using DALL·E 3.”
The metal
- In2 SABRE Awards South Asia 2024WinnerAI / VR / AR / Immersive Technology
Who made it
- Agency
- Studio X (WPP)
- Technology
- OpenAI
Who wrote about it
- afaqs!Say no to forwarded festive greetings with Coca-Cola's Diw(AI)li campaign
- exchange4mediaThis Diwali, Coca-Cola will help you create personalised AI-generated wish cards
- WARC · SABRE AwardsThe Coca-Cola Company: #MagicWaliDiwali
- Analytics India MagazineOpenAI celebrates Diwali with Coca-Cola at DevDay 2023
