Coca-Cola Remix Experience
Experiential Media Platform: Managed Cloud Runtime · Secure Media Delivery · Deployment Enablement
Delivered a high-visibility consumer engagement platform for the World of Coca-Cola "The Studios" exhibit that enabled kiosk-generated media experiences to be uploaded, stored, and retrieved through branded shareable links.
- Role:
- Technical Delivery Lead
- Employer:
- IfThen
- Client:
- Coca-Cola
- Team:
- 6 developers, ~15 stakeholders
- Industry:
- Non-Alcoholic Beverages
- Timeline:
- 4 months (2025)
Impact
- Provided the technical delivery leadership for an exhibit that helped secure the #4 Best Pop Culture Museum in the U.S. ranking by USA TODAY in 2026
- Supported a high-engagement experience that maintains the museum's 2-hour average visit time by ensuring 100% uptime for interactive Remix/Canvas stations
- Enabled an experience that successfully shifted the museum narrative from passive viewing to active participation, aligning with Coca-Cola's broader strategy for organic revenue growth
My Role
- Coordinated delivery and implementation details between the third-party development team and Coca-Cola infrastructure team
- Translated Coca-Cola's enterprise GCP security, scalability, and architecture requirements into concrete implementation guidance for the development team
- Troubleshot integration issues by utilizing direct access to GCP environment logs and configurations to isolate and resolve runtime problems
- Developed the deployment pipeline used for TEST and PROD releases
- Verified service-to-service communication across runtime, storage, database, and configuration boundaries
Technical Architecture
The platform allowed kiosk-generated media to be uploaded, stored, and later retrieved by visitors through branded shareable links. The application was deployed on Google Cloud using managed infrastructure components for runtime, storage, ingress, security, and observability.
System Overview
- Ruby on Rails application supporting both kiosk ingestion APIs and consumer-facing retrieval pages
- Cloud Run used as the managed container runtime
- Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL for transactional persistence
- Google Cloud Storage used for media object storage
- HTTP(S) Load Balancing and Cloud Armor used for public ingress and edge protection
- Artifact Registry and Cloud Build pipelines supported TEST and PROD deployments
- Secret Manager handled runtime configuration, while Cloud Logging supported operational visibility
Stack
Frontend
Backend
Infrastructure
Context
The project supported an interactive "Remix" experience within the World of Coca-Cola Studios exhibit, where visitors created media at kiosks and later retrieved it through a branded web flow. Because this was a highly visible public attraction, the platform required reliable media ingestion, secure storage, and protected public access under heavy foot traffic.
The primary delivery challenge was overcoming the domain gap between the third-party application development team and the enterprise-governed Coca-Cola infrastructure team. Because the application logic relied heavily on specific GCP cloud-native features, resolving runtime, permission, and secret-handling issues required deeply understanding both sides of the architecture; translating application requirements to the infrastructure team, interpreting environment constraints for the developers, and providing the technical depth needed to troubleshoot issues as they emerged.