The Context
In 2015, Coca-Cola marked the 100th anniversary of the contour bottle with a global campaign called “Timeless,” spanning 130 countries, a worldwide art exhibition, celebrity partnerships, and a year-long marketing push that treated the bottle itself as a cultural icon. The contour bottle had been patented on November 16, 1915 by the Root Glass Company, and a century later it remained one of the most recognized shapes in the world.
For their employee celebration event in the Kansas City area, Coca-Cola did not rent a ballroom or a conference center. They rented Cinetopia Overland Park, the entire building.
Not a screen. Not a Movie Parlor. The entire theater: the lobby, the concourse, every space in the building, turned over to Coca-Cola and transformed into an immersive branded environment for their team to celebrate the milestone together.
The Challenge
Cinetopia Overland Park’s most distinctive physical feature was its entrance tunnel: a long walk-through passageway connecting the building entrance to the main theater, fitted with a 10-projector matrix system that projected synchronized content across all three walls simultaneously. Every guest passed through it. It was not background decoration. It was the first physical experience of the venue.
For a Coca-Cola centennial event of this scale, that tunnel needed to feel like Coca-Cola. The content had to hold up under close proximity on large projected surfaces, carry the weight of one of the most brand-disciplined companies in the world, and be ready in time for the event.
The turnaround was two days.
What Was Built
Coca-Cola supplied their brand marks and centennial campaign marketing materials: the assets developed for the global “Timeless” campaign, including the imagery, iconography, and visual language of the 100-year anniversary.
The job was to take those assets and transform them into a fully animated motion graphics environment built for a three-wall projection tunnel.
Every element across all three walls was animated: brand marks, campaign imagery, and centennial visuals choreographed to fill the tunnel environment from floor to ceiling on the back wall and both sides. Content was built to work as a synchronized experience across the full 10-projector matrix, meaning what a guest saw wrapping around them as they walked through was one unified environment, not three separate screens.
The result was a tunnel that put every guest inside the Coca-Cola centennial the moment they walked into the building, before they ever reached the event space.
What Made This Different
Most of the work at Cinetopia was built around films. Studios provided source material, content was created around a specific theatrical release, and environments were designed to put an audience into the world of a movie.
This was not that.
Coca-Cola did not come to Cinetopia to show a film. They came to use the building as an event venue, and specifically to use the tunnel as a centerpiece branded experience for their guests. The entire physical infrastructure of a luxury cinema was repurposed as the environment for a corporate centennial celebration.
That required a different kind of creative approach. Working entirely from brand assets rather than film source material, building something that felt like a campaign execution rather than a theatrical environment, and delivering it in two days at the quality standard expected of one of the most recognized brands in the world.
The Takeaway
The tunnel at Cinetopia Overland Park was built to make an impression. A 10-projector system wrapping three walls of a walk-through passageway is not a subtle piece of infrastructure. The Coca-Cola centennial event used it exactly the way it was designed to be used: as an environment that made every guest feel the significance of the moment they were walking into.
Fourside Studios built the content that made that happen in two days.