Coca-Cola’s latest Coke Studio brought together five artists from the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand, all creating unique songs from a mood-lifting base track by producer Styalz. BINI sparked fan buzz with hidden clues, while others staged surprise pop-up shows, culminating in a final cross-border mash-up connecting artists and new audiences.
When Coca-Cola launched this year’s edition of Coke Studio across the ASEAN and South Pacific region, the brief was deceptively simple: explore the way young people use music to shape their moods and celebrate a world where borders no longer limit musical discovery. What emerged instead was an ambitious experiment in cross-border creativity — a three-country, five-artist collaboration anchored by a single base track and a series of surprises that kept fans guessing until the final drop.
At the centre of this journey was Adam Ross, Creative Strategy Lead for Coca-Cola across the region. For him, the project began not with a marketing plan, but with two insights drawn directly from young listeners. First, fans increasingly turn to music as a tool for mindset management — not just entertainment, but emotional calibration. Second, the idea of “regional music” is disappearing; algorithms, fandom, streaming platforms and social media have flattened borders, allowing a Filipino fan to obsess over a Kiwi band and an Australian teenager to discover a Filipino girl group within minutes.
“Those two things sat at the heart of our thinking,” Ross wrote in his post announcing the project. And so Coke Studio set out to build a musical experience that wasn’t just multi-artist, but multi-country, multi-genre and multi-mood — all while feeling deeply personal to fans.
The Base Track That Started It All
To engineer a collaboration that could stretch across cultures, Coca-Cola turned to Australian, ARIA award-winning producer Styalz, known for creating energetic, emotionally charged pop-electronic soundscapes. Styalz was tasked with crafting a single base track — one designed with intention: it needed to lift the listener’s mood, no matter who reinterpreted it.
This foundational beat would become the skeleton on which five very different acts built their own songs. It wasn’t a remix brief; it was a creative challenge. What does the same sonic DNA look like when filtered through different cultures, genres, and creative perspectives? How does a track transform when handed to rising Filipino pop idols, a youth orchestra, an Australian EDM duo, a Kiwi pop band or an indie pop singer-songwriter?
Step One: BINI Sparks the Fan Frenzy
The first artists to take on the track were BINI, the massively popular Filipino girl group whose fandom — known for meticulous decoding and lightning-fast online discussion — is one of the most powerful in Southeast Asia today. But BINI didn’t simply release their song. They crafted “Oxygen”, a track powered by their hallmark upbeat pop sound, and paired it with a music video laced with hidden clues.
Some clues were obvious to eagle-eyed fans: symbols, visual easter eggs, motifs referencing Australia and New Zealand. Others were more cryptic, including images subtly referencing instruments or characters connected to other upcoming artists.
Fan forums exploded.
“Who’s the white guy?” one commenter asked — a line that became Ross’s favourite fan reaction because it symbolized exactly what Coke Studio wanted: curiosity, speculation, and connections between global fan communities.
In an age where passive listening is replaced by interactive fandom, BINI’s easter-egg-laden release became both a musical moment and a digital scavenger hunt.
Australia + New Zealand Step In With “Around U”
Once the BINI mystery simmered online, Coca-Cola unveiled the next layer of the story: a collaboration between Australian and New Zealand artists — Peking Duk, Kita Alexander, and Drax Project. Together, they released “Around U”, a sparkling, upbeat track that blended EDM, indie pop and R&B influences into a feel-good anthem.
But the release wasn’t limited to digital platforms.
In keeping with Coke Studio’s emphasis on connection, the artists surprised fans with pop-up live performances across unexpected venues. A surf shop. A pizza shop. A McDonald’s.
These weren’t high-production concerts but spontaneous, intimate interactions that collapsed the distance between artist and audience. In a world where global music careers are often filtered through polished screens, these moments brought authenticity and delight — and the videos, of course, spread instantly across social platforms.
The Final Fusion: Styalz Brings It All Together
After each artist created their own interpretation, Coke Studio unveiled the final act of its narrative arc: Styalz returned to the studio to fuse the tracks into one grand mash-up.
The accompanying music video pulled together all five artists, visually connecting them through digital portals — a symbolic representation of cross-border creativity. The final product wasn’t just a remix; it was a cinematic metaphor for a musical world with no real boundaries, where sounds flow freely from Manila to Melbourne, from Wellington to wherever the listener happens to be.
A Fan Journey, Not Just a Campaign
Across these rollouts, one throughline remained clear: Coke Studio wasn’t merely releasing music. It was crafting an experience — one that mirrored how young audiences consume culture today.
- They want interactivity, not passive listening.
- They want to discover artists organically, not through forced promotion.
- They want stories, not just songs.
- They want to feel part of a global community, not isolated in regional silos.
Coca-Cola tapped into these shifts by making each drop a moment of engagement. BINI’s hidden messages activated fandom communities. The Australian–New Zealand pop-ups created shareable memories. The final mash-up connected all artists into a single narrative.
And underneath it all, the music — built from one emotional blueprint — delivered on the promise of the initial insight: helping fans manage their moods while opening doors to new creative worlds.
A New Blueprint for Regional Collaboration
What makes this Coke Studio iteration stand out is not just the number of artists or the scale of production. It’s the strategic embrace of a borderless music ecosystem.
By giving multiple artists the same creative seed and letting them interpret it in their own cultural and stylistic ways, Coca-Cola created something rare: collaboration without constraints. The project celebrated individuality while reinforcing connection — an approach that mirrors how young listeners today navigate playlists, genres and global fandoms.
Three countries participated. Five artists reimagined the same emotional core. Fans from across the region interacted, speculated, discussed, and celebrated. And through it all, Coke Studio wove a story about music as a universal emotional language — one that increasingly defies geography.
A Campaign That Let Fans Discover Artists — and Artists Discover Fans
Perhaps the most notable achievement of this experiment was its ability to introduce musicians to entirely new audiences.
A Filipino fan was exposed to Peking Duk for the first time. An Australian listener discovering BINI’s choreography and energy. A New Zealand teen hearing orchestral elements from the Orchestra of the Filipino Youth.
Cross-pollination wasn’t a by-product; it was the point.
And as Ross wrote, “The whole experience let fans connect with new artists and artists connect with new fans.”
In an era where the music industry constantly searches for ways to break regional walls and expand reach, Coca-Cola found a surprisingly simple recipe: one mood-lifting track, five creatively liberated artists, and a narrative that unfolded like an unfolding musical mystery.
Coke Studio didn’t just release music this year — it released a moment. A moment shaped by curiosity, collaboration, and the shared emotional pulse that runs through listeners everywhere.
