Recently, Coca-Cola® pulled what would have once been known as a “stunt.” These days, it is nothing short of marketing genius: The Happiness Machine. Click over to YouTube to watch the video The event happened on the campus of St. Johns University in Queens, New York. A Coke machine appeared to be on the fritz in the student union and instead of stealing your money, this machine was defective in your favor. A student would put in their money and an ice-cold Coke would plunk down. Then another unexpected plunk. Followed by another. And another. And another. The bewildered and amused student would then begin passing out Cokes to other passers-by. Giant grins would appear on everybody’s faces. And all of this is captured on film.
Being in the branding business, you get a lot of opportunities to launch new brands and revamp others. Probably, the most ticklish of these branding assignments is the brand re-design. This is usually a high-wire tightrope journey between a new marketing director who wants to radically update their brand and a quiet hunch that there may remain truckloads of equity in the brand’s current logo design.
