by: Karl Long
Coke is working with new marketing company Crayon to launch a competition in Second Life, the name of the project is VirtualThirst and involves the general public and residents of Second Life designing Coke vending machines that deliver “experiences”.
As it turns out you can submit ideas as written descriptions, images, videos, or of course jump in world and design “drop” your design off at their location in SL. I’m pretty sure that this will do better than their video competition megaflop “the coke show”, to start with they have gone to a place where people are creating stuff already, and are trying to connect with “creatives” there. I’m not sure this passes my “who cares” test, but I guess that will depend on the output of participants. In many ways “design a new coke vending machine that vends experiences” smacks of something that sounds great to marketers, and a huh? from the general populous… maybe.
"imagine a world in which a simple vending machine could dispense - not Coca-Cola - but the ESSENCE of Coca-Cola: refreshment, joy, unity, experience"
Seriously? who talks like that and who believes that the essence of coke is refreshment, joy, unity, experience; apart from the vp of marketing.
Anyway, what have they done right:
- They’ve gone to where people are creating
- They’ve involved the community in the judgeing
- They are going to let people use the winning in Second Life for free in their homes etc
- the publicity they get from just doing something in Second Life will be an additional return on investment
They also have a myspace page
Other coverage:
Original Post: http://experiencecurve.com/archives/coke-and-second-life-more-with-social-media-and-cgc-experiments
Leave a comment