Will Coca-Cola's Chief Digital Officer Transform the Brand?

The Coca-Cola Company has created a Chief Digital Officer role to bring its brands closer to consumers by accelerating technology adoption across the enterprise.

Sedef Salingan Sahin has been appointed to the position and is tasked with “integrating the company’s digital network and connecting work across related functions”, according to the company announcement.

Sedef will report to newly appointed CEO Henrique Braun, with both leaders beginning their roles on 31 March 2026.

Henrique said: “We believe our ongoing growth depends on understanding consumers even more deeply.

“We are evolving our operating organisation structure and elevating digital leadership so we can move faster and work smarter across all markets.”

Global brand, local relevance

The move builds on Coca-Cola’s “global-local” approach, preserving the equity and consistency of iconic brands like Coca-Cola, Coke and Sprite while tailoring portfolios and experiences to local tastes.

The company leverages its global supply chain and relies on local bottlers to produce and distribute, enabling market-specific innovation from unique teas in Japan to fruit teas in India.

Key pillars of this blueprint include continued investment in digital capabilities, strengthening core brands, expanding the beverage portfolio through acquisitions and embedding net-zero goals across operations and marketing.

The announcement adds that Sedef is the ideal leader to “enable end-to-end transformation from strategy to execution”, who will “accelerate growth and performance”.

With operating experience across developed and developing markets, and having lived in multiple regions, Sedef is positioned to advance the global-local strategy while unifying brand execution and enterprise technology.

Digital investment and creative momentum

Coca-Cola says it has significantly shifted investment to digital platforms to meet consumers where they are. Since 2019, the company’s digital mix has grown from less than 30% to approximately 65% of total media spend in 2024.

As the longest-standing partner of the Olympic Games since the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the company says the partnership helps “to bring the Olympic spirit to athletes, officials and fans around the world”. These marquee moments increasingly serve as digital stages for brand storytelling at global scale.

Creatively, the company is pairing innovation with brand heritage. In 2024, Coca-Cola’s iconic Christmas advert was created with Generative AI for the first time. The company says this combined “emerging technology with human creativity”.

Internally, the marketing culture emphasises acting boldly, learning quickly and scaling what works - principles that will guide how Sedef aligns data, platforms and processes to sharpen audience insight, orchestrate content and measure performance across markets.

Leadership to accelerate transformation

Sedef joined Coca-Cola in 2003 and previously served as President of the company’s nutrition, juice, dairy and plant category within the marketing organisation before leading the Eurasia and Middle East operating units.

These roles positioned her to lead digitalisation across the business, including transformation within the marketing organisation itself. In the new remit, Sedef will connect digital, data and operations so brand building and shopper activation can be executed with greater precision and speed.

Henrique, currently Vice President and Chief Operating Officer and set to succeed James Quincy as CEO, underscored the significance of the role: “The Chief Digital Officer Position is a pivotal role for our future.

"Sedef’s proven leadership will help shape how we digitalise the enterprise end-to-end, and over the next several months she will assess how to organise the teams responsible for digital across the enterprise to help strengthen the execution, simplify how we work and enable us to deliver for consumers with greater precision and speed.”

By elevating digital leadership at the C-suite level, Coca-Cola aims to fuse brand storytelling, consumer insight and operational agility, so the company can move faster, connect more meaningfully and create value for consumers and customers across every market.