In the month of Ramadhan, muslims fast between sunrise to sunset. Breaking of the fast at sunset is a big deal, especially in Indonesia, a country with the largest muslim population in the world. It’s customary for restaurants, small businesses, even random strangers, to give sweet snacks or drinks to customers and passerbys at sunset.
So Coca Cola decided to do the same thing, but to get the free drink, you have to follow Coke Indonesia on Twitter. Only after you do that will they give you a Coca Cola product. The whole campaign is so wrong on so many levels that I wonder if anybody lost their jobs because of this.
(I know the answer is probably no, because I doubt anybody in the company realized just how ridiculous the campaign is)
Mistake #1: If you want to give, then just give. The fact that you’re asking me to do something for you EVEN WHEN EVERYBODY ELSE IS GIVING THE SAME THING FOR FREE just shows arrogance and how out of touch you are with the world.
Mistake #2: Asking someone to follow you on Twitter makes you look like a D-Bag (“Hey, I already followed you. You have to follow me back!) Asking someone to follow you on Twitter with the lure of something sweet makes you look like a criminal luring kids into his van with candies.
Mistake #3: The drink that you “give” is not even Coke! It’s a some shitty new tea drink that’s way too sweet for my taste. But even if it tasted like necter of ambrosia, it’s still a plain old promo of a new drink. Damn, didn’t you use to give away samples for free?
Mistake #4: The campaign is still going on all the way past the month of Ramadhan. I took that picture on top of the post at a social media fair one month after the end of Ramadhan. Coke please stop, you’re embarassing yourself.
Mistake #5: …you heard that right, at a Social Media Fair! Social Media is about platform for dialogue, but you’re clearly just collecting names who’ll be there to look at your ad messages when you blast ’em out on Twitter.
Mistake #6: Why Twitter? Even if you’re sticking with the loudspeaker model of advertising, why would you choose a medium that makes your message so fleeting? Unless of course, you’re planning on bombarding my Twitter feed with your ads. That would just be plain evil.
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Gah, somebody throw Coke the Youth Marketing Handbook!
If they’re too cheap to fork out $2 for it, then just download the free version.
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I could go on and on about why this campaign is so wrong, but I wanted to know your thoughts on it. What do you think?