Coca-cola nails social media by releasing personalized bottles

In Australia they did this a year ago - predictably using common names with a scattering of rare names. Then they did "relationship" ones - sister, boss, mother, etc.<p>At one stage I saw a coke event of some sort in a mall that looked like you could line up and get a bottle custom printed with any name on it.<p>It was definitely successful increasing the amount of people talking about coke, even if only to lament that they'd never be able to find their name.

Jones Soda has been doing this since the late 90s:<p><a href="http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20000529&#38;slug=4023748" rel="nofollow">http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_Soda#myJones" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_Soda#myJones</a>

It wouldn't surprise me if this benefits Coke by making consumers more interested, but hurts Coke by pissing off store owners. Most stores that sell soda are set up for the consumer to take the soda from the front of a long row, and then the row slides up in the display. I'd guess that some customers would create a mess trying to find their name and not bother to clean it up (if they can - many soda refrigerators can only be easily loaded from the back).<p>If my speculation is true, that probably gives store owners an incentive to de-emphasize the placement of the Coke so that random browsers will be less likely to create a huge mess. Obviously store owners have to sell Coca-Cola because some customers are specifically looking for it, but they don't have to give it prime real estate.

How easily we are amused. How quickly we classify things as genius.

Yeah I thought it was a brilliant success in Australia. Like the author of the article states - you wouldnt go a day without seeing a bottle in your feed. It was pretty active for at least 6 months before it died down.<p>I dont drink coke, but I did enjoy the fad.

Was already done about a year ago here in Australia:<p><a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/coca-cola-puts-peoples-names-on-bottles-in-share-a-coke-campaign-59657" rel="nofollow">http://mumbrella.com.au/coca-cola-puts-peoples-names-on-bott...</a><p>Not sure about the rest of the world.

Coca-Cola is experimenting with a "smart" soda machine (dubbed "Freestyle") that lets you share personalized mix/match flavors with your friends. It comes loaded with over 100 brands.<p>They also had a mobile app to send a Coke to a stranger, which was part of an advertising campaign.<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Z-GevoYB8" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Z-GevoYB8</a>

They're doing the same here in Brazil: <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?twu=1?sl=auto&#38;tl=en&#38;u=http%3A//www.meioemensagem.com.br/home/comunicacao/noticias/2012/07/31/Coca-Zero-imprime-nomes-em-embalagens.html" rel="nofollow">http://translate.google.com/translate?twu=1?sl=auto&#38;tl=e...</a>

I'm in New Zealand myself, and I really hate this. I drink Coke as a guilty pleasure, but when they bought this in I got really turned off.<p>I'm not going to drink Coke that's for "Callum", "Katherine" or &#60;random name that's not mine nor my wifes&#62;.<p>Major turn off. I would really like to see if this promotion actually <i>works</i>.

What I want to see (and somewhat of a prediction) is for CocaCola to have a campaign where users connect with Facebook, CocaCola collects all of their information - for good purposes of course ;) ...and then print personalized labels with the user's actual Facebook profile pic. They'd know the user's location, so they'd just need to workout how to distribute those bottles to local distributors.<p>If people are stupid enough to search for a common name on a coke bottle, then they'll go apeshit searching their local retailers for their actual Facebook picture (and those of their friends).<p>Coke should give me a royalty for this :)

Vedett, a Belgian beer brewery, has been doing something similar / doing it better. It prints user-uploaded pictures on all their bottles. It's pretty cool and has made the beer quite popular among the 'creative avant-garde' (or whatever we call 'em these days):<p><a href="http://www.vedett.be/" rel="nofollow">http://www.vedett.be/</a>

I work in retail, and the amount of times I'd see customers moving coke bottles all over the shelf just so they could find particular names, it was just astounding. Infuriating, but somewhat clever marketing.

I thought social media was something to do with connecting users on the web, not printing statistically relevant names on products.

Typical Kiwis. Years behind the Aussies.

this reminds me of the keychains I used to see at highway rest stops that had all sorts of people's names on them. Always wondered who bought them (especially as no one in my family has a "popular" name).

christ people are fucking stupid if simply seeing their name written somewhere pleases them that much