4Front Marketing

If you have not seen the brilliant Coca Cola Happiness Machine video then you owe it to yourself to watch it now below. Not least of all because what I am going to say next will make very little sense without you viewing it.

This video went viral in a major way. Estimations put its global viewings at 712 000 in the first 24 hours. You have just added yourself to the number that has seen it and I am blogging about it. Pretty powerful stuff.

Coca Cola clearly got many things right with this stunt. It hit their target audience bang on and it grabbed their interest. I have a a question though. What made the teenagers in the video behave the way they did? It becomes clear later on in the video that this is more than a case of the machine malfunctioning but at first that could be exactly what it is.

Believe it or not I have seen a vending machine malfunction first hand. Trust me the reaction was not one that Coke would have wanted to broadcast. Kids pushed and shoved and certainly did not hand the emerging products around with a smile of their face.

Why was this so different?

The first reason is that Coke have chosen their mark very well. The teenagers are college students, a little older than the ones I saw who were Highs School students. I am also willing to bet that plenty of research had been done into the types of kids that attend that particular campus.

The second reason is the most interesting though. Coke has the most awesome marketing department of any product in the world (or at least one of them). They have already established an image for their product that suggests fun and lightheartedness and the kids in the video have been bought up with it. It may sound odd but those teenagers trust that machine.

Please do not get me wrong I am not criticizing Coke. This is a work of brilliance. I am just saying that there is even more at work here than many marketers give it credit for and we can all learn plenty from it.