How Coke Is Reimagining The Future Of Social Events

It is easy to complain about the trivial nature of the majority of social media content, but it is rapidly becoming a fact of life that the socially connected among us can’t help sharing our lives as they happen with our virtual networks. One place where this sharing behaviour becomes particularly accelerated is at live events. People tweet more often, take more photos and generally become more social both online and off.

At Coca-Cola Village in Israel recently, Coke tried an interesting experiment in social sharing by offering over 600 teenagers a wearable wristband that contained their Facebook profile details. Then throughout the weekend, these teens could automatically tag themselves in pictures, check in to various locations and generally post and share to Facebook without needing to use a mobile device or computer … which was a good thing since the Village looks a lot like Spring Break. Here’s an interesting promotional video:

While the photo tagging gets a lot of attention in the video, the biggest idea for me was the “wave your hand to like something” feature that these RFID tags allowed the teens to do. Imagine if this could be recreated on a larger scale at all kinds of events or even retail locations. Just wave your hand/wristband to like a page on Facebook, or join an email list for promotional offers. No lists to add your email address to and no URLs to remember. When following, friending or finding a brand becomes as easy as a flick of your wrist, that would really be something for marketers to get excited about. I can already see the signs: wave here to join our community.