The Coca-Cola Co.'s Coke Zero brand used a unique form of mobile marketing to reinforce its position as a leading low-calorie soft drink.

Coca-Cola worked with Nokia to create a Coke Zero-branded Nokia 5310 device, putting the brand right into the hands of consumers. Music content was bundled on Nokia 5310 devices and acted as an incentive for consumers to buy the handset that was designed by Nokia with music in mind.

"We work with Nokia because it offers so much more than traditional mobile advertising," said Luciana Feres, marketing execution director for Coca-Cola Brazil.

"The synergy between Nokia and Coca-Cola Zero's brands was very important for success and presented us with something that's hard to find elsewhere," she said. "What other branding medium can work better than something you interact with on an hourly basis?"

The Coca-Cola Co. is the world's largest beverage company, refreshing consumers with more than 2,800 products. Globally it is the No. 1 provider of sparkling beverages, juices and juice drinks and ready-to-drink teas and coffees.

To extend its relationship with young audiences in Brazil, the soft drink giant launched Coca-Cola Zero Studio, a project that fuses different types of music together.

Coca-Cola got two Brazilian artists to record a show mixing their music styles and the Coke Zero brand. This music was preloaded onto Nokia 5310 devices in Brazil.

Why Brazil specifically?

Coke Zero offers taste of Coca-Cola with zero calories. Brazil has become one of its most important markets, and Coke Zero was looking for ways to reach these thirsty individuals.

The branded devices were sold through retail stores, the Nokia flagship store and online.

The devices were preloaded with four songs from the Coca-Cola Zero Studio and had Coke Zero branding on the box, sleeve, phone jewelry and headset.

The phone also had four themes so that branding was present on the user interface.

The promotion resulted in an immersive brand experience with 30,000 special-edition phones sold through retail stores.

Also, there was a lot of buzz and publicity around the project in Brazil's national press.

Nokia has been in the press recently, as the company may be considering a plan to let advertisers customize its phones with logos and promotional multimedia content.

As a result, the manufacturer could then offer the branded handsets to at lower prices to end-users.

Just like Coca-Cola did in Brazil, advertisers would be able to select the type of Nokia phone that best fits their target audience and preload their branded content onto the phone model.

A spokeswoman at Nokia said that there's actually no big story here and that the Coca-Cola-branded handset was a niche project example.

"We have done some initial campaigns around branding on a small scale in Brazil, but have not made any official announcements about expanding this or launching any wide-scale projects in this regard," the spokeswoman said.

"We've shared the experience with a few of our partners but have not said we'd expand the opportunity further."