After reading an article in Advertising Age magazine about Coca-Cola’s new futuristic soda machine and how the machine will affect the general public and companies, I was intrigued about how this will change advertising and consumerism in the future.
Coca-Cola’s futuristic ‘freestyle’ machine, which was launched 3 years ago, will now be in 80 different markets by the end of this year. This new machine serves up to 125 flavors of beverages, ranging from the usual Coca-Cola flavors to sports drinks and even lemonade. It also collects usage data that is sent straight to Coca-Cola, such as what flavors are the most popular and at what time of day is there the most traffic.
The freestyle has been added to test-group restaurants without any additional marketing. The restaurants noticed a rise in foot traffic and beverage purchase, which is great considering it happened without the advertising- just imagine what numbers the restaurants would observe if there were?
The freestyle machine is a 3 way benefit for all aspects of business to consumer marketing. The consumer benefits by having many options and being able to get the item that they want. The restaurant benefits by having satisfied customers, higher foot traffic from the availability of options, and having the ability to provide this magnitude of satisfaction. And Coca-Cola benefits by getting real time usage data sent straight to them, ridding them of having to meet with external parties, as well as exposing all their options to the consumer at once. Coca-Cola can then immediately put into affect the information they have received and give consumers what they want in other restaurants that don’t yet have the freestyle.
Coca-Cola is in the process of developing a mobile and Facebook app for the freestyle, which will provide a wide spectrum of marketing to its consumers and make the freestyle even more personalized by allowing friends to mix different flavors and share their combinations amongst each other via the app’s.
With this three-way benefit, it makes you wonder what will be the next big thing to use a ‘freestyle’ type of service. Will this be the ‘future’ of products/data retention for businesses? Will consumers begin to expect a totally personalized experience with their products? I’m interested in finding out what the freestyle means for the future and how it itself will progress into once it launches its advertising and marketing campaigns in 2012.
Photo Credit: Jeff Moriarty
Hunch Free
We get to learn a little bit more about all the digital marketing disciplines through these casual classes, plus we usually eat some good food and share some laughs. Do you have any type of continual learning programs where you work? How does your company go about it?