Coca-Cola Campaign brings Facebook Like to Life

Many companies struggle with ways to bridge the gap between online and offline communications. One company that’s broken the mould in that regard is Coca-Cola.

At their ‘Coca-Cola Village’ event in Israel, each guest was given an RFID bracelet encoded with the wearer’s Facebook login details. RFID receivers were also positioned all around the venue. As people moved around ‘the village’ they could touch their bracelet off any of the receivers to automatically post a branded message on their Facebook wall saying they ‘liked’ that particular thing.

Photographers were also roaming about the event taking pictures of the attendees. People could ‘touch’ the photographer with their bracelet to automatically tag them in the picture and post it to their page. This video gives an overview of what they did:

The event was held over three days with visitors allowed to enter in groups of 650. Each group produced a phenomenal 35,000 Facebook posts with each visitor posting an average of 54 pieces of branded content to their Facebook page. Obviously the novelty factor played a role here but this was a great success nonetheless.

‘Liking’ something on Facebook can often be a reflex action -- Something done without thought or any real meaning. However taken from the virtual, into the real world, the action of ‘liking’ something on Facebook is transformed into something much more meaningful. It also adds depth to the overall promotional campaign, tying events and promotions into the brands online presence.

The campaign was managed by Israeli digital agency Publicis E-dologic and really highlighted that there need not be a barrier between online and digital communications.

Given that Facebook also recently launched their geo-location feature ‘Facebook Places’, this type of initiative is likely to become much more common. Facebook users in the US can now log in to Facebook, hit the ‘check in’ button to update their location and see if their friends are also there….very similar to FourSquare.

The commercial potential for brands with such location based tools is vast. Being able to reach customers with marketing information right then and there as they are at your location is a powerful tool. Brands can use this to give customers loyalty points, give them a discount on their purchases just for checking in, deliver targeted adverts, highlight special offers and so on.