Coca-Cola and Central Cee Kick Off the Premier League With ‘Taste Every Second’
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
TL;DR: Coca-Cola has launched ‘Taste Every Second’, a Premier League brand platform built around an original Central Cee track and WPP’s Open X team — betting that music and creators, not just match sponsorship, are how you own football fandom for the 2026/27 season.
What Coca-Cola actually launched
Coca-Cola kicked off the 2026/27 Premier League season with ‘Taste Every Second’, a fan-first platform that debuted across all channels on 18 August 2026. At its centre is an original track, ‘The Team’, co-created with British rapper Central Cee and producer P-rallel, plus a 120-second hero film directed by Keane Pearce-Shaw.
The work is led by VML through WPP’s Open X model, with support from Ogilvy, WPP Media and M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment. It runs across TikTok and Instagram, digital out-of-home near stadiums, limited-edition QR-coded packaging with instant-win prizes, and fan watch parties that will roll through the season.
Why music is the real media buy
Coca-Cola has sponsored football for decades, but ‘Taste Every Second’ shows how the job of a sponsorship has changed. Rather than lean on perimeter boards and the official-partner logo, the brand is buying cultural relevance through an artist — Central Cee, cited as the first UK rapper to pass 10 billion Spotify streams — whose audience overlaps almost perfectly with the young, mobile-first fans Coca-Cola wants.
That matters because attention now lives in the feed, not the broadcast. A track fans stream, remix and lip-sync does the distribution work a 30-second TV spot used to pay for. The sponsorship becomes content people choose, rather than advertising they tolerate.
Marketing Minute’s read
Our take: the smartest part isn’t the celebrity, it’s the architecture. Coca-Cola has built a system — a song, a film, packaging mechanics, DOOH and live watch parties — where every element feeds the others and gives fans something to do, not just something to watch. The QR packaging turns a bottle into both a media channel and a first-party data capture point.
The risk is authenticity. Creator-led work only pays off when the artist feels native to the brand rather than rented for a quarter. Coca-Cola has committed to a season-long presence, which is the right instinct: one-off drops rarely build memory structures, but a platform fans meet week after week can.
What brands should do
For marketers with smaller budgets, the lesson scales down. You don’t need Central Cee; you need one owned idea, one piece of genuinely shareable content, and a mechanic that invites participation — a hashtag challenge, a QR promotion, a local watch party. Pick a cultural partner whose audience truly matches yours, then commit for a season, not a stunt.
The brands winning football this year are treating fandom as a year-round relationship and music as a distribution engine. Sponsorship logos are table stakes; the platform built around them is where the value now sits.
Quick FAQ
What is Coca-Cola’s ‘Taste Every Second’ campaign?
It is Coca-Cola’s Premier League brand platform for the 2026/27 season, built around an original Central Cee track called ‘The Team’, a 120-second film, QR-coded packaging and fan watch parties. It launched on 18 August 2026.
Which agencies made the Coca-Cola Central Cee campaign?
VML led the work through WPP’s Open X model, with support from Ogilvy, WPP Media and M+C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment.
Why is Coca-Cola using a rapper for football marketing?
To reach young, mobile-first fans through culture rather than logos. Central Cee — cited as the first UK rapper to pass 10 billion Spotify streams — brings credibility and built-in distribution in exactly the audience Coca-Cola wants.
The clever move here isn’t signing Central Cee — it’s building a platform fans can step into. A song they stream, a code they scan, a watch party they attend. That’s what modern sponsorship looks like: you stop interrupting the culture and start giving people a reason to join in. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
The brands that win football in 2026 aren’t buying logos on a pitch — they’re building participatory platforms that turn fans into distribution.
Is your brand still buying sponsorships as logos, or building platforms fans actually want to join?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: Creative Salon, Campaign UK, PR Newswire.
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
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