The MBA student and the Coca Cola campaign.

During a recent visit to Guayaquil, Ecuador, my family invited me to spend a day at the “Club de Tennis de Guayaquil”, a reputable member-only club, with beautiful facilities featuring swimming pools, restaurants and other amenities.

During lunch I heard someone say “There is a machine giving out free Coca Colas!”, and being the keen Marketing MBA student that I am, I wholeheartedly went to find it. Had I finally come across one of the ingenious campaigns featured in Coke’s state-of-the-art ads?

Indeed there was a Coca Cola dispensing machine near the pool, surrounded by people. Its interactive screen invited you to touch it to get started and then encouraged you to fill up a virtual bottle of Coca Cola by jumping energetically for 20 seconds on a platform facing the machine. If you succeeded, the machine dispensed a free, 500 ml bottle of cold Coca Cola. An ad-worthy campaign! Small scale, granted, but still!

I observed people’s reactions to it, gauged my own after jumping more than once, and here is what impressed me the most:

-        Young and not so young adults were happy to try, and since we seldom indulge in jumping in public for no vital reason, it was a lot of fun.

-        Teenagers seemed to have a field day with the challenge and tried to out-jump each other.

-        If you did your jumping best but couldn’t fill the bottle, staff members standing by rewarded your efforts with a bottle from a cooler.

-        You could jump for a free Coca Cola, and get it, as many times as you wanted, a fairly unique feature in a market where unlimited refills of world brand sodas are virtually nonexistent.

-        Younger children were not able to fill up the virtual bottle regardless of their efforts. A glitch? Unlikely. Dispensing sodas to children whose parents are not close by can be sketchy. But if Mami or Papi said aye, kids who jumped got their out-of-the-cooler Coke.

So, considering all of the above and what I know about Hispanic markets, these were my takeaways from the campaign:

-        Placement was excellent to cut through the clutter and reach consumers while their defenses are down.

-        The interactive nature of the campaign was an innovative reminder for Guayaquil’s up-and-coming middle class that Coca Cola is not only a status, but also a fun brand. Be lavish, be chic, be happy.

-        Adults rather than children were the likely target. In the end: who buys the drinks?

-        Last but not least: I got four bottles of Coca Cola (yes, that many) and great pictures of my cousins and me bouncing carefree amidst a cheering crowd.

      

      See the "pictures" bit? ... Read "memories". 

Thumbs up, Coca Cola.