Imagine the experience of visiting 206 countries and logging more than 275,000 miles in just 365 days. Three young people are in the midst of the world’s most ambitious travel adventure – Coca-Cola’s Expedition 206 – and they have just completed their visit to Abu Dhabi as part of the record-setting journey.
Following a worldwide online vote to determine the Expedition 206 team, the three winners – Tony Martin, 30, a Washington, D.C., native now teaching kindergarten in Munich; Kelly Ferris, 23, a university student from Brussels; and Antonio Santiago, 24, a university student from Mexico City – set off on an attempt to visit 206 countries and territories where Coca-Cola is sold throughout 2010 on a mission to find out what makes people happy.
The team is bringing Coca-Cola’s “Open Happiness” campaign to life as they visit people from different cultures, document their experiences and share stories of happiness and optimism with the world. People can follow the entire trip in real-time on www.Expedition206.com and a variety of social networking sites, including Facebook (http://facebook.com/cocacola), YouTube (http://youtube.com/expedition206), Twitter (http://twitter.com/x206), Flickr (http://flickr.com/e206) and a blog at http://expedition206.typepad.com.
Abu Dhabi was in the spotlight on April 7 as the unprecedented global expedition made stops around the city. During their visit to Abu Dhabi, the team members visited the largest mall in the city, Marina mall, and interacted with a variety of different cultures, learning from them what happiness means. They also stopped by the HTC University Campus to interact with students there and spread the happiness message.
Antoine Tayyar, Public Affairs and Communications Director for Coca-Cola Middle East commented “We planned a series of activities for the ambassadors to experience during their visit to Abu Dhabi and hope that they were able to interact with as many people as possible in the city with this refreshing initiative towards finding and documenting happiness. The city is a beautiful one, and the people living within it have an unmatched charm that undoubtedly the Happiness Ambassadors will catch on film.”
As the team travels the globe throughout 2010, fans can follow along every step of the way with an Expedition 206 widget that takes all of the team’s content and pulls it onto fans’ own Web sites, blogs and social network profile pages. In addition, the built-in chat function on www.Expedition206.com ensures people can quickly and easily become a part of the adventure by interacting with the team members and other fans, and sharing their own stories of happiness.
