Coca Cola generally does a good job with its marketing, though some campaigns have been hit or miss. With the new bottle design having already taken over stores across the nation, it’s time to keep the sales going and encourage a little more brand recognition. The latest marketing campaign from Coke is a social media integrated application that helps you find your look-alike.
The promotion is actually for Coke Zero, which is being touted as having the same taste as the original Coke drink. And if Coke Zero can have the same taste, then there’s gotta be someone out there that has your same face.
I mean, we’ve all heard of the elusive doppelganger. Some new transfer in your home town says they know someone from back home that looks just like you. Others ask if you have a sister in some distant city, while others still always seem to mistake you for someone that you later discover lives just a few miles from you. And we always want to meet these people, to see if they really look like us.
The mystery is half the fun, because most of the time we think we look way better than our “twin” selves. And then we wonder whether or not our friend is crazy for suggesting that other person looks remotely like us. Forever, though, they will insist that we look exactly alike, pointing out facial features that we’d rather not pontificate for extended periods of time.
But we can’t resist. Coke knows this, and that’s why it’s dipped into a very large database in order to find your other self. Facebook, that is.
With hundreds of millions of users, surely there’s bound to be one that kinda looks like you. Coke will help you find them, promoting their own doppelganger all the while. The app uses facial recognition technology to scan your photo and the photo of others that have added the app. Yep, you’re limited to only those that have also added the app to their profile. But over 100k people have done this so far, so there’s a good chance you’ll find the “person” you’re looking for.
The use of facial recognition technology has an interesting play for this app in particular, though the technology itself has the potential to be used for various products and applications. We’ve seen a great deal of enterprise use, for security purposes and tracking the misuse of copyrighted content. Some fun applications have been employed for facial recognition technology, and the numbers are incrasing as we continue to find more ways in which to use it.
Creating a Facebook app that uses facial recognition technology is also smart, as it gives immediate access to its entire user base, where each user most likely already has photos uploaded to be used for the app. In this way, Facebook really facilitates better implemented social media marketing, as it provides a profile full of existing content that can be used for a variety of purposes.
Instead of creating a standalone site and having you take a webcam photo or upload one from your desktop, the Coke app can just use what photos you already have stored on Facebook. The minimized amount of extra work users need to do makes it easier for them to become willing participants in this kind of marketing campaign, even though there is still the option of using a webcam or uploaded photo to yield optimal results.
Porter-Novelli, Ogilvy PR, Burson-Marsteller & MSL Group represent Coca-Cola in different regions of the world.
