Coke's Viral Campaign
by Adrian Hanft, (2 comments)
You may have seen commercials for Coke's new contest, called "Unexpected Summer." They have put a gps/cell phone device in winning cans. Once you find out you are a winner, you call Coke on the cell phone, and then they will track you down via the GPS, and surprise you at an unspecified time. The tagline is, "You can Win, but you can't hide." According to fool.com, the military is a little nervous about the promotion. They apparently told soldiers not to bring the cell phone cans to classified meetings. The attention of the military can only help spread the buzz about their promotion. If you want to learn more about it, Coke has a pretty cool site built with Flash that explains the technology, and lets you see where the winning cans are in the USA.
Comments (2)
Bennett said:
Nice promotion. Do you really think this would be classified as viral marketing. It is unique, but still seems to fit within the traditional form of sweepstakes and giveaways. It is practically the same promotion that Coke did when the wad of money would pop out of the top of the winning can. This is more hi-tech, and l assume wouldn’t leave room for someone mistakingly drinking the chemicals in the can.
Posted on July 17, 2004
Adrian said:
You are probably right that this wouldn’t qualify as viral. Its just a new twist on an old theme. It’s pretty cool, though. I guess being cool isn’t enough to let it be categorized as viral. My bad.
Posted on July 17, 2004