« Namma Bengaluru ». « Yo Philly ». « Notre Paris ».
This year, Coca-Cola released millions of bottles. Each with a different city name, a local dialect, a expression we say among ourselves. In India, in the United States, everywhere.
Not just 50 versions for 50 cities. Millions of variations. Mass-produced.
The factory prints ‘your’ bottle per kilometer, at the same time as the neighbor’s bottle, which will never be the same. The algorithm taps into local cultural data, adapts, combines, and produces packaging that speaks directly to each community.
Result: people don’t just buy. They photograph, they share. ‘Look, it’s MY city on the bottle.’ The packaging becomes content, becomes viral.
What has changed
Nutella did it in 2017. 7 million unique jars sold in a month, an algorithm that blends colors and patterns. But it was still abstract design.
There, we’re talking about cultural identity. AI no longer merely varies the shapes. It understands the context, it knows what resonates in Bengaluru versus what resonates in Philadelphia. It scales intimacy.
And it doesn’t cost more. Digital printing and algorithms have made the complexity affordable. A million different designs cost the same as a single design repeated a million times.
What this says about the present
We’re no longer in the era of a single message repeated everywhere. We’re in the era where the global brand speaks locally, at scale, without losing its coherence.
AI doesn’t replace the creative. It multiplies its impact. The designer sets the foundations, defines the universe. The machine can endlessly adapt it to the context.
Coca-Cola has just launched Project Fizzion with Adobe: their brand guidelines become ‘intelligent’, automatically adapting depending on where they are used. The creative stays in control, but AI does the dirty work of adaptation.
Packaging is no longer just packaging. It is a personalized medium that generates engagement.
And it’s just the beginning.