It’s like peanut butter and jelly. It’s like a sock hop and saddle shoes. It’s like soda pop and social interaction.
Wait. What? One of those pairs above just doesn’t go together.
But before I explain I have a question for you.
Have you ever longed for a “social experience” while dropping your quarters into a vending machine?
I can honestly say that I never have. But if you have been pining for an interactive junk-food experience, I have some great news for you. Pepsi has got you covered.
Just this past October in “Captain Carrot Versus King Kraft” I told you about Kraft’s glittery new interactive vending machines that woo you with animated videos, music, and interactive promotional offers.
Now Pepsi has upped the stakes in the vending-machine wars with its spiffy new social soda machines.
Yup, that’s right; now you can not only spike your blood sugar faster with a shot of corn-syrup-laced soda pop you now can share one with a friend (or even a stranger should you so desire) and speed up their march towards diabetes too.
Or, as Pepsi puts it, “Social vending extends our consumers’ social networks beyond the confines of their own devices and transforms the static, transaction-oriented experience into something fun and exciting they’ll want to return to, again and again.”
Uh, thanks Pepsi, I appreciate the gesture, but personally I have never felt confined by my “own devices” nor have I ever felt the longing to transform my “static” vending-machine experience into something “fun and exciting.”
So, you may now be wondering, “How’s this supposed to work exactly?”
Well, with a trendy touch screen, of course. You can watch a lively soda can animation and then choose to either “Gift a drink” or “Redeem a gift.”
Still a little confused? Never fear, Pepsi has provided us with a helpful video, complete with a catchy little tune, to clear it all up. Click here to watch it.
In the land of bad ideas the social vending machine is definitely king. Just one look at the statistics makes it easy to see why.
In the United States alone, there are 23.6 million people suffering from diabetes. (That’s 8% of the population!) There are currently about 60 million adults who are living with obesity, and 9 million of our children are now classified as overweight. And heart disease is responsible for more than one in every four deaths in this country.
Clearly, the last thing we need is a “fun and exciting” vending-machine experience that encourages us to drink more sugary sodas.
Please just promise me that if you find you can’t resist the allure of the brilliantly backlit touch screen on your local social Pepsi machine that you at least will only order water.
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