Coke’s Formula for Making Vending Machines Fun & Creative

Coke as a brand has been very successful at sharing how its brand is about getting people together and sharing experiences.

For the last 5 years they have performing experimental marketing campaigns, often at the vending machine level, and then sharing those video moments on digital marketing channels to activate their base.  It shows that for many brands, after one has been established, your identity can transcend branding elements / identity, and become more metaphorical about the essence or feel of the product itself.

The most recent campaign requires that two coke consumers have to engage together to open the soda itself. The result of documenting this action creates user generated content, when curated appropriately tells the larger story about coke being used to bring people together for a more full life.

Here is another example they came out with in the last few years that asked users to dance to get a coke.  This had a bit more “viral” because it attracted crowds, thus became a larger spectacle.

Although Coke has a lot of capital for developing campaigns, really any brand can come up with creative ways for users to use their product and tell that story.  Their are always emotional and rational bits of a brands story. It is up to the creative and marketing team to find fresh perspectives to tell a brands story and how to engage their prospects and fans.

Many brands are relying more on earned media to make waves within their community.  The two main reasons for this is because consumers are tired of traditional media, but also creative content is also more sharable, and thus has a wider reach.

Either way, if Coke can put a smile on your face while you are looking at their product, they are one step closer to getting you to remembering their product the next time you are faced with a choice of what beverage to buy.

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Mini Pepsi: Its What’s on the Outside that Matters.

 

We have seen mini before.  Most recently every candy bar and snack has been reduced to snack size for bite sized cravings.

Pepsi most recently has introduced a small can that gives consumers just enough taste of a sweet treat without having the unhealthy side effects of a while can. A tasting menu perhaps.  :)

From a business perspective, I think its super impressive that by going bite size, the soda giant might appeal to those who want just a bit, or something to hold them over till their next soda.  I am not sure of how the new cans are priced, but it would be interesting to compare the delta between the costs of the new mini cans, normal cans, and the final cost to a consumer.  They are far cheaper to ship and bottle I would assume, and the cost maybe be similar to a full can.

Mini cans have been around in airplanes and hotel mini bars for a while.  It will be interesting to see how they perform in a mass audience.

Sometimes, its not whats on the inside. 

 

Bonus: Other Mini Concepts

Smart Car:

Pringles Mini:

 

 

Magna Carta Jay Z Album Marks Milestone in Corporate Collaboration

What does it mean that major albums are co launched by a mobile company for an artist?  Jay Z teased the release of his Magna Carta album today signifying a milestone in artist marketing.  The video above showcases tracks, producers, and story, but its presented by Samsung Galaxy.  More and more we are seeing corporate endorsements of the changemakers and creatives of our times, and I personally am intrigued on how this awareness and shift in paid media dollars will effect content creation.  What does it mean when a new album from the heart is cosponsored by a secondary brand ?  This is commonplace in sports, and social entrepreneurship, but music has usually only maintained this relationship after the fact. Ex. Tailor Swift and Pepsi.  However, to co associate your personal brand with a tech brand seems like a new frontier in a pre launch environment.  Do you think any other artists will follow this trend?   Or for a brand like Samsung, maybe this is the best time in the “hype cycle” to endorse a product / person to get the maximum brand transference to impact their bottom line. What do you think?

-Patrick

ps. The other interesting note is that he teased the announcement using imagery via social media.  More and more, Artists and personal programming channels are being used to interact with fans wtih RTM ( real time marketing ) rather then relying on older PR channels and wire services.

where the “Pepsi Like machine” hits a tipping point between earned media dollars and privacy

 

“The Pepsi Like machine” in addition to being buzzworthy makes really good business sense.  Lets look at this from a math perspective.

According to 2 different sources ( link 1   Link 2 ) the cost of a “fan” is over a dollar. One says 1-7 dollars, another says way over 100, but lets skip over all the different methodologies and say its over a buck – this way we get to agree on the main insight rather then the details of why the research is wrong.  So, what is the cost of a soda ? Maybe 75 cents, or 1.25 ?  The beauty of the coke like machine is that people are opting into a loyalty program for a free sample.  The cost of giving away that soda is equal or less then the amount of dollars they would have spent to gain that fan.   Additionally, the documentation of this stunt by pepsi translated into earned media dollars ( via viral video and blog editorials ) which is bound to give pepsi an edge in awareness and brand equity – that is… free advertising.

This was a great execution of digital marketing moving its way into physical computing that makes sense.  They are also very lucky that they are some of the first ( not the first ) to ask people to trade their social capital for real assets. Because if everyone starts to ask fans to like their product for a free, people will start to value their privacy more then the transaction that occurs. A reverse tipping point comes into play between free stuff and privacy. 

The other interesting thing here to note is that documentation has make this appear to be a huge campaign when this really just occured at once concert. Lets say it only had a reach of 100 ( I have no data to back this up). The video of this campaign itself far exceeded the actual number of people that got free product.  This is where many guerilla marketing campaigns have gone where they set up a special campaign to reach only a few ( 007 promotion comes to mind (coke )) and most of the effort is spent on sharing this story throughout social networks in place of paid media.  It really shows an interesting trend in how marketing dollars are moving from paid medias to earned and owned networks.