Coca-Cola Expands Into Metaverse With New Flavor And Partnership With This Popular Video Game

The most iconic soft drink in the world is joining the hundreds of companies heading into the metaverse for additional growth opportunities.

What Happened: The first Coca-Cola flavor born in the metaverse is coming from Coca-Cola Inc KO soon with the launch of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Byte.

“Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Byte will bring the flavors of pixels to life in a limited-edition beverage that transcends the digital and physical worlds,” the company said.

The beverage launched in limited quantities in select Latin American countries on April 4. In the U.S., the new flavor will be released in twin packs of 12.5 oz slim cans online. The beverage will be released in China on May 23 in retailers.

Related Link: Is The Metaverse A Marketing Buzzword Or Multitrillion Dollar Opportunity? 

Why It’s Important: To help launch the new beverage, Coca-Cola helped design an island called Pixel Point in the massively popular “Fortnite” game from Epic Games, which is partially owned by Tencent Holdings TCEHY.

Players who enter Pixel Point will be able to play four mini-games with immersive and interactive challenges. Each can of Coca-Cola Zero Sugar Byte also features a playable augmented reality game when scanned.

A “Concert in a Can” experience featuring pop star Ava Max will also be part of the promotion of the beverage.

Coca-Cola launched its first non-fungible tokens last year and follows rival PepsiCo PEP, who has been aggressive in product launches in the NFT and metaverse space.

Coca-Cola follows other companies like Nike Inc NKE in utilizing huge active user bases of a metaverse-related game to promote its product. Nike teamed up with Roblox Corp RBLX to launch NIKELAND within the game. Nike recently said 6.7 million people have visited NIKELAND in Roblox.