My Favorite Cafe — GEORGIA Vending MMA CASE STUDY Machine App

Campaign Summary

The category is competitive in , with a large number of vending machine and brand options available. The Coca-Cola Company’s GEORGIA brand earns more than 70 percent of its revenue from consumers making vending machine purchases. To spur sales, GEORGIA released a mobile app that allowed consumers to select a favorite vending machine and interact with an artificial intelligence “café owner.”

Strategy

Objective and Context: GEORGIA, Japan’s No. 1 canned coffee brand, earns more than 70 percent of its revenue from vending machine sales made by frequent purchasers. Japan has approximately one vending machine for every 20 people, which creates fierce competition among vending machine companies and brands. Coca-Cola has a network of approximately one million vending machines nationwide.

In winter, when the demand for hot canned coffee climbs, Coca-Cola wanted to create a campaign that would raise purchase frequency of GEORGIA coffee from vending machines by heavy users.

Target Audience: The campaign’s main target was heavy consumers of GEORGIA canned coffee: male consumers over 20 years old who frequently purchase the brand from a vending machine.

Creative Strategy: The campaign’s big idea was to turn Coca-Cola’s network of vending machines into favorite cafés able to offer personalized service. This would strengthen the engagement between loyal fans and the vending machines in order to enhance purchase intent.

Execution

Overall Campaign Execution: The campaign was an innovation that encouraged communication between vending machines, the brand, and consumers.

Mobile Execution: Coca-Cola introduced the My Favorite Café GEORGIA vending machine app for the campaign. After users selected the “café owner” of their choice and registered a vending machine as one they regularly visit, the app became an engagement tool between them and the café owner/vending machine.

The app uses GPS and geo-fencing to locate a favorite machine’s nearby customers. When a user enters the vicin- ity of a favorite machine, messages generated by an artificial intelligence program get sent to the app. The user can then “have a conversation” with the machine. For example, a café owner can offer a personalized thank-you after a GEORGIA purchase.

The app also shows the registered vending machine on a map, how many times the user has visited the “café,” how many canned coffees have been purchased, and how connected the user has become to the owner of the café. The more a consumer visits the vending machine, the more personalized the experience will become — like visiting a favorite café.

Results

The GEORGIA Vending Machine app has been downloaded more than 460,000 times, and it has reached No. 1 in the free app category in the iTunes Store in Japan. According to user surveys, 68.5 percent of GEORGIA fans feel more attached to the brand than before, and 38.7 percent have increased their consumption of GEORGIA canned coffee. The campaign has also generated earned media.

Source

“My Favorite Cafe — GEORGIA Vending Machine App.” 2014 MMA Smarties Submission Bronze Winner Relationship Building/CRM. Brand: The Coca-Cola Company (Japan). Lead Agency: DENTSU INC.

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