Vending machines have a different meaning in many Asian countries than they do here in the United States, often taking on the tasks of supplying far more than basic drinks and fast food needs. But the influences from Japan’s vending machine culture in particular has made its way into cool collaborations in the States in many ways, from Quiksilver’s collab with The Standard Hotels delivering retro board shorts via vending machine, to Uniqlo’s fun T-shirt-in-a-tube campaign, to Pepsi’s “social” vending machine campaign called Random Acts of Refreshment.
Coca-Cola has taken their vending machine marketing concepts to new heights in Korea with the recent launch of a machine that inspires dance moves in exchange for a Coke.
Capitalizing on the phenomenon of Dance Dance Revolution, the video game that charmed an entirely new generation of gamers to imitate dance moves, the vending machine prompts customers to watch various moves done to music from the pop boy-band 2PM. If the viewer’s moves are deemed good enough by the vending machine, the players get a cold refreshment as a gift.
Coke set-up their first dancing vending machine in a theater area in Korea which was an ideal location for others to watch the dancers interacting with the vending machine. What’s also pretty cool about this video is how some of dancers not only imitated the machine’s moves, but broke out into their own improvisational dance routines that got the growing audience stoked as well.
Obviously, this is a clever marketing campaign for Coca-Cola, and probably one that we’ll see imitated in various other youth culture markets in the near future.
Check out the video.
