Coca-Cola is planning to launch Pakistan’s first ever digital music festival, the CokeFest 2020, in a new and unique way. While the spread of Covid-19 posed a complete halt to organizing live events or large public gatherings, Coca-Cola took the initiative to conceptualize a disruptive digital event for music lovers around the country by collaborating with Patari, being a popular online music streaming platform in Pakistan and Tapmad, Pakistan’s leading on-demand video streaming platform, to create a unique virtual experience offering engagement, musical performances and much more as a two-way interactive experience. The three-day event is scheduled to go live on November 20-22, 2020 and will be free for all to attend. To join the excitement, music lovers will need to download and register on the Patari mobile app followed by signing-up for the event to receive a unique code which can be used on TapMad’s mobile app or website to enjoy the live performances virtually from any location. Event attendees can expect to be mesmerized by leading names rocking the local music scene including the absolutely unbelievable 9-year-old Pakistani rapper Kaky Thou$and to the ethereal Natasha Baig following a line-up that will be oozing with top talent and ear-candy. Some of the other brilliant acts will include Sirine Jahangir, Shamoon Ismail, SomeWhatSuper, Young Stunners, ESharp, Abdullah Siddiqui, XPolymer Dar and veteran rock star Ali Noor, who has a surprise in store for all. While speaking about this unique initiative, Fahad Ashraf, GM Pakistan and Afghanistan at The Coca-Cola Export Corporation said, “Coca-Cola is disrupting the new normal by creating a virtual event enabled through latest technologies. With CokeFest 2020, we wanted to avoid large gatherings whilst still keeping the spirit of music alive. So we brought some of the best musical talent in Pakistan together with the country’s leading tech companies, to bring you a virtual experience that feels as close as possible to attending an actual musical concert.” While speaking about this unique initiative, Fahad Ashraf, GM Pakistan and Afghanistan at The Coca-Cola Export Corporation said, ‘Coca-Cola is disrupting the new normal by creating a virtual event enabled through latest technologies. With CokeFest 2020, we wanted to avoid large gatherings whilst still keeping the spirit of music alive. So we brought some of the best musical talent in Pakistan together with the country’s leading tech companies, to bring you a virtual experience that feels as close as possible to attending an actual musical concert’ FoodPanda is the official food partner for CokeFest 2020, and they will be providing over 200,000 discount vouchers over the course of the festival from some of the best restaurants in Pakistan. Talking about the event, Zarlasht Faisal, CEO of Patari said, “Throughout the year, people have seen a lot of social media live events but what we wanted to do was to recreate the experience of being at a digital music festival through engagement with our audiences; we were looking to do something that could have an emotional connection with people.” While describing the technical approach of planning this event’s virtual experience, Yassir Pasha, CEO of Tapmad said “We already made progress on a conventional one-way communication, whereby we offer content to a user and they consume it in a passive way. However, in order to engage the users for longer duration, we pursued a strategy to create a two-way communication in terms of content integration with the user.” #CokeFest2020, for many years has brought together Pakistan’s two biggest passions; music and food. #CokeFest2020 has a long history of inviting music lovers to celebrate their love for music and food by hosting a number of upcoming artists and restaurateurs forming a winning combination. However, redefining the real experience and taking it to the virtual space with the same oomph and zest was the need of the hour. With big names like Coca-Cola Pakistan, Patari and Tapmad all coming together promising a first-of-its-kind interactive digital event – expectations are bound to skyrocket and set a new standard of experiencing entertainment in the new normal.