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How exciting can a vending machine get?
If you’re Coca-Cola, the answer is “very” - when it’s a “multimedia Coke machine”.
Also known as the uVend, Coke debuted its interactive, touch-screen vending machines at the Beijing Olympics. It’s now starting to put them into malls across the US. Today, the uVend is a novelty that generates lines stretching around the block - for a machine that still, at heart, just dispenses fizzy drinks.
But for Coke, these networked, brightly lit devices open up a new world of marketing potential.
Coke has over 3m vending machines in 200 countries. Like many consumer packaged-goods companies with a disjointed supply chain and reliant on retailers, vending machines are one of the few ways it can reach its consumers directly.
“We don’t control the entire retail experience, but we control the entire vending experience, so why not enhance that?” says Carol Kruse, VP of global interactive marketing at Coca-Cola.
Traditional vending machines are already “great static branding,” she says. “But now [with uVend] you can bring that engagement at the point of purchase – tying the marketing message to the consumption.”
By changing what drinks it promotes at different times of the day or week - at a mall, say, evenings for kids, weekends for families - Coke sees the same benefits as any digital billboard, but it can also see the results immediately. The same precision marketing and instant gratification (for marketeers) that online retail enjoys is thus brought to the real world - a first for companies like Coke.
“The same way you can optimise a banner ad,” based on performance, “we can optimise this,” says Gaston Legorburu, executive director at Sapient, the digital agency which designed the machines. “It’s also a great test platform for new creative.”
The machines also contain cameras and Bluetooth wireless connections, the potential of which for analysing age, gender or interaction rates makes Mr Legorburu even more animated.
But is Coke’s finance department as excited? Vending machines already function pretty well, Ms Kruse admits, and there is a substantial capital cost involved in fitting out a uVend and its accompanying network. “There is a pretty healthy premium on this vending machine versus the traditional big red box,” she says.
That means it could be some time before a meaningful proportion of those 3m red boxes are given the multimedia treatment. But initial tests suggest a uVend costing three times a traditional machine can generate a return ten times larger, in incremental sales volume and the increased media value.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” says Mr Legorburu, who says similar technology could be used to transform more retail experiences. “The vending machine gives you a window into a lot more to come.”
Tim Bradshaw is reporting from the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this week.
David Gelles, Joseph Menn, Chris Nuttall and Richard Waters in the FT's San Francisco bureau upload their views - plus tech insights from writers in New York, London and Tokyo
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