Coca-Cola Turns a Belgian Billboard Into Christmas Wrapping Paper
Coca-Cola's 2013 Belgian Christmas outdoor campaign transformed a standard shopping-mall billboard into a functional sheet of branded wrapping paper that passersby could tear off and use to wrap their presents, created by Duval Guillaume Modem in partnership with Clear Channel.
The activation rests on a single, elegant logical connection. Coca-Cola's long-running global brand platform, known as Open Happiness, carries an implicit premise: before happiness can be opened, it must first be wrapped. Agency Duval Guillaume Modem made that premise literal. In Belgium, with Christmas only days away, the agency installed billboards constructed entirely from Coca-Cola-branded wrapping paper inside the shopping malls of the country's largest cities. The iconic Open Happiness line was printed directly onto the paper. Shoppers laden with last-minute gifts could approach the billboard, tear off a sheet, and walk away with both a branded memory and a practical tool for the season.
The campaign ran in late December 2013 and was formally archived and published in January 2014, as documented by Clapboard. Its medium was out-of-home outdoor, placing it squarely within a format that typically demands passive attention. By making the billboard physically consumable, Duval Guillaume Modem converted a one-way broadcast surface into a two-way participatory moment. The creative credits, as documented by Campaigns of the World and corroborated by Clapboard, name Geoffrey Hantson and Katrien Bottez as creative directors, and Lennert Vedts as art director. The campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual clarity and contextual precision within its category.
Duval Guillaume Modem built the campaign's strategy on the structural tension within Coca-Cola's own brand language. The Open Happiness platform, introduced globally in 2009 and associated with Wieden+Kennedy, according to Campaigns of the World, positioned Coca-Cola as a catalyst for optimism, sharing, and everyday emotional uplift. The Belgian agency identified Christmas as the calendar moment when the idea of opening happiness becomes most culturally resonant and most commercially urgent, then engineered a mechanic that made the platform tangible rather than aspirational.
The placement decision reinforces the strategic logic. Installing the wrapping paper billboards inside Belgian shopping centres, rather than on street-level outdoor panels, placed the activation at precisely the moment of purchase anxiety — a shopper who has just bought gifts but not yet wrapped them. Clear Channel, as the out-of-home media partner, enabled access to high-footfall mall environments where dwell time is longer than at roadside sites, increasing the likelihood of physical interaction with the installation, as reported by The Drum in its December 2013 coverage.
The competitive context in Belgium's non-alcoholic drinks category is relevant. Coca-Cola operates in a market where PepsiCo represents its most direct carbonated competitor, and where the broader soft-drinks landscape includes ambient grocery brands that rarely produce culturally visible seasonal activations. By owning the physical space of a shopping mall at Christmas with an object that becomes useful, Coca-Cola claimed a category-level share of cultural attention that product-price advertising cannot replicate. According to investors.coca-colacompany.com, Coca-Cola recorded two percent full-year volume growth globally in 2014, a period in which sustaining brand salience in mature European markets remained a strategic priority for the company.
The creative execution depends entirely on material honesty. The billboard is the product. There is no separate call to action, no digital layer, no QR code directing attention elsewhere — the interaction is the message, and the message is the interaction.
Creative directors Geoffrey Hantson and Katrien Bottez, along with art director Lennert Vedts at Duval Guillaume Modem, constructed the billboard from sheets of Coca-Cola-branded wrapping paper arranged across the surface of a standard out-of-home panel, as documented by Campaigns of the World and corroborated by chrisrawlinson.com. The Open Happiness tagline was printed onto every sheet, ensuring that each piece of paper torn away by a shopper carried the brand line into a domestic setting — onto a present placed under a tree, handled by a family, and photographed in the kinds of Christmas morning images that circulate privately but persistently.
The production design required that the paper be both durable enough to survive a busy shopping-mall installation period and easy enough to tear cleanly, so the interaction felt satisfying rather than frustrating. The tension between structural integrity and ease of use is a functional craft problem that the team resolved in favour of the user experience. The activation format — what is sometimes called a creative montage within the outdoor category — uses the physical billboard surface as raw material rather than as a display medium, a distinction that gives the work its conceptual sharpness.
Clear Channel's role as media partner was not simply logistical. Mall-based out-of-home placements in Belgium carry specific technical and regulatory requirements for installations that alter or distribute material from the panel itself, and Clear Channel's involvement signals that these operational dimensions were resolved at a professional level, as noted in coverage from thedrum.com.
No verified performance data for this campaign is publicly available in terms of impressions delivered, sheets of wrapping paper taken, or measurable uplift in Belgian sales volume for the Christmas 2013 period. The campaign does not appear to have been submitted for major international award shows in a way that generated publicly documented results, based on available records reviewed by Clapboard.
Structural effectiveness, however, can be assessed with confidence. The campaign solves a genuine consumer problem — last-minute gift wrapping — at the precise physical and temporal location where that problem exists. This produces a utility exchange: the brand gives something functional, the consumer gives attention and physical engagement. That exchange is self-reinforcing in the short window before Christmas, and the branded paper entering private homes extends the campaign's reach beyond the billboard itself into an environment where advertising does not normally operate.
Coverage by The Drum in December 2013 indicates the activation attracted press attention at the time of deployment, a signal of earned media value that complements the paid out-of-home placement. The campaign's archival on Clapboard, Campaigns of the World, and famouscampaigns.com, more than a decade after its original installation, reflects sustained creative industry interest — a qualitative indicator of lasting relevance within the outdoor and seasonal advertising categories. The Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100 positions the work above the platform average for out-of-home activations in the food and drink category, recognising its conceptual economy and contextual precision even in the absence of disclosed quantitative results.
Coca-Cola's Belgian Christmas campaign installed billboards made entirely from branded wrapping paper inside major Belgian shopping malls. Created by Duval Guillaume Modem with Clear Channel, the activation let shoppers tear off sheets to wrap their presents, bringing the Open Happiness platform to life as a functional, seasonal gift to consumers.
Duval Guillaume Modem, a Belgian agency, created the campaign alongside media partner Clear Channel. Creative directors Geoffrey Hantson and Katrien Bottez led the work, with Lennert Vedts serving as art director, as documented by Campaigns of the World and corroborated by Clapboard's own editorial records.
The activation ran in late December 2013, in the final days before Christmas. Billboards were installed inside shopping malls in Belgium's largest cities, targeting last-minute shoppers. The campaign was formally published and archived in January 2014, according to records on Clapboard and Campaigns of the World.
The Open Happiness platform, introduced globally in 2009, invites consumers to share everyday emotional uplift. Duval Guillaume Modem identified that happiness must be wrapped before it can be opened, making the billboard's wrapping paper both the medium and the message — a direct, functional expression of the brand's core idea.
Coca-Cola's wrapping paper billboard earned a Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100, according to Clapboard's editorial assessment. The score reflects strong conceptual clarity and contextual precision, placing the work above the platform average for out-of-home activations in the food and drink category, despite no publicly verified performance metrics.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
