Coca-Cola happiness ambassadors in Hungary

After crossing more than 50 countries all over the world, the happiness ambassadors of Coca-Cola have reached Hungary. The three youngsters travelling around from Madrid – unique marketing idea from Coke.

The three members of Expedition 206  — Tony Martin, 30, a Washington, D.C. , native who teaches kindergarten in Munich; Kelly Ferris, 23, a university student from Brussels; and Antonio Santiago, 24, a university student from Mexico City  — will document the entire trip 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://www.flickr.com/photos/e206/) and a TypePad blog at http://expedition206.typepad.com.

"Celebrating New Year's Day was a perfect start to this journey as we are anticipating an amazing 2010 and look forward to sharing the experience with the world," said Tony.

As the team travels the globe seeking stories of happiness, fans can follow the real-time updates with a new 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 Expedition 206 adventure — interacting with the team members and other fans. Using all of these sites and tools, fans will serve as "virtual travel agents" for the team, helping decide where they will go, what they will do and whom they will visit in each destination.

As part of their preparation for Expedition 206, the team met with Margarita Alvarez, president of the Coca-Cola Happiness Institute in Madrid, to learn about the organization's research into what makes people happy. The Coca-Cola Happiness Institute was established by the Company in 2008 in Spain, in collaboration with several leading experts, to conduct and publish research about the nature of happiness and how different people perceive happiness.

"The research we've done to study happy people and the causes of happiness will provide a good foundation for the ambassadors as they travel the world seeking out and documenting stories of joy and optimism," Alvarez said. "These are three of the most energetic, uplifting people I've ever met, so it'll be fun to watch them interact with so many different people from all corners of the earth."