Coca-Cola Knows How to Engage Crowds with Staggering Results
Despite the begrudging sentiment that the UK gets to see 007 weeks before I do, I still find it fascinating that Coke Zero has utilized the opportunity to engage their crowd in an unforgettable experience with staggering results.
As part of the Skyfall partnership, Coke Zero intended to engage the crowd in a way that would put them into the shoes of Bond. The challenge was to setup a Bond style mission in the train stations of the UK (or perhaps Antwerp?). Upon ordering a Coke Zero from a vending maching, commuters were asked if they wanted free tickets to the Skyfall premiere. To collect the tickets, consumers had to race across the station battling an onslaught of obstacles.
How does crowdsourcing play into this cleverly viral experience? Coca-Cola may have produced it without any pure crowdsourcing tools, but they did get their crowd involved with the final product. Additionally, if it's not as easy for your corporation to envision a powerful campaign like this internally, there are a few ways crowdsourcing can help.
When we analyze the steps involved, it's a very simple process to put in place. To start, Coca-Cola needed to come up with the idea. Creative ideas like this are easily obtained internally if it's baked in your company culture. If it's not, this becomes the ideal place to inject an open innovation platform to pull ideas from the crowd.
Lisa Kennedy, CMO of GE healthymagination, notes that Coca-Cola has had a longstanding ability to take the magic of their crowd to further stimulate their crowd. This was most recently seen harnessing the enthusiasm of "Waving Flag." So for a company like Coca-Cola, this is easy. For others, crowdsourcing steps up in a big way.
Once the idea was created, Coca-Cola simply needed to collect the pieces: 2 vending machines, actors, and the coordination between the two. There's no difficulty in a corporation procuring these pieces.
The third step is the partnership with the physical location. In this case, it's a train station in the United Kingdom (or a debatable location). Coca-Cola has managed to place vending machines in nearly every corner of the world, so a partnership like this isn't even an issue.
The final steps would be testing and implementing. As you can see, the most difficult part to a creative and engaging experience like this is the idea. Luckily, this is exactly where crowdsourcing can be injected.
By engaging their crowd, Coke Zero has managed to create a video that has been viewed more than 5 million times in just over a week. The video has also received nearly 4,500 comments, most of which are positive.
Some skeptics are arguing that only good-looking actors are running through the station - and that could be true, but the results remain the same. The crowds were engaged. Plus, it's a great case for how crowdsourcing could help your corporation create and execute a video of your own - whether staged or not.