Diet Coke – Slender Vender. Why combining PR and Advertising in a campaign can produce great Marketing
By Andrew Barratt on Saturday, June 8, 2013
Coca Cola partnered with Ogilvy Paris to devise a marketing communications strategy to promote brand Diet Coke.
To communicate that Diet Coke is a brand and product that is elegant and fits seamlessly into consumer’s everyday life, they developed the ‘Slender Vender’.
The thinnest vending machine in the world fits where others can’t and was seen showing up in unexpected places around Paris. You can see how people and shoppers reacted when they discovered the machine on a bridge, in a hair salon, outside a cafe, in a bowling alley, on a cycle path, and even between treadmills at the gym!
A stylish piece of PR and advertising activity, which communicates clearly the client brief in educating consumers and driving interest and sales around the product and brand. A strong idea which will no doubt have resulted in tangible marketing spend with a return on investment (ROI) through sales increase.
What this PR activity does well is that it translates very nicely into video, online content. With more people than ever before using the Internet, a campaign and strategy that is able to work well as both Out Of Home (OOH) Marketing/experiential and online/digital marketing is one that will have strong results for the brand and sales, by reaching the most number of consumers.
The behind the scenes piece at the start of the video of how the vending machine was designed is nice, as is the footage of the consumer/shopper experiences and encounters with the experiential PR campaign – edited to a high standard and quality.
This is a great example to show how the combination of PR (experiential and stunt) and advertising practices (strong artistic direction and great video content) can produce great marketing.