Social: Coke's song works and Walkers' video crashes

Author: CIMCOM

More and more brands are launching fun ways for customers to get involved with content. Coke’s shareable personalised songs show how customisation can drive up levels of engagement. In contrast, crisp brand Walkers' personalised videos provide a sobering example of a campaign car crash.

Coke – what to do

With Coke, it seems that personalisation is a great thing. Type your name into the special campaign website and the brand will respond with a personalised song that features your name. It’s a great ego-booster that’s spot on for this selfie generation. But this isn’t personalisation on the fly – this is pre-produced personalisation. The brand has created a bank of 1,000 possible personalised ditties, using 25 songs in a variety of genres. If your name isn’t in the bank, and many won’t be, you get a respectful ‘Sorry’ message and song instead. From the brand’s perspective everything is pre-approved, controlled and safe. This kind of thought-through personalisation works well.

Have they got your name? See the campaign website.

Consumers can buy a bottle of coke with a personalised label too. This time potentially rude words are screened out using a hidden blacklist. If you input one of these you get a very polite message telling you the ‘name’ isn’t on the approved list:

“Oops! Looks like the name you requested is not an approved one. Names may not be approved if they're potentially offensive to other people, trademarked, or celebrity names. We've worked hard to get this list right, but sometimes we mess up. If you think this is an error, please contact our Customer Care team. Otherwise, please try again, keep it fun and in the spirit of sharing!”

Walkers – what not to do

With Walkers, personalisation had no limits. Twitter users could send a selfie to the Walkers Twitter account for a chance to win Champions League final tickets. Their photos would automatically appear within a personalised video which also happened to feature the brand’s long-running celebrity, Match of the Day presenter, Gary Lineker. It could’ve been good.

See the unofficial video compilation that shows how this went wrong.

The Walkers Wave or How Not to do Social Media

The branded Walkers video features Lineker holding up a picture frame automatically personalised with the individual’s photo. Lineker says:

“Thanks for joining the Walkers Wave and celebrating the UEFA Champions League final.”

But the campaign mechanisms didn’t take into account how mischievous – subversive even - people can become online. Before too long, because it’s possible to include a photo, any photo, in the Walkers' personalised video, people were doing just that, and uploading images of dictators, serial killers and paedophiles. These images automatically appeared in Walkers cheery videos which were then widely shared, and caused widespread outrage.

A swift response from Walkers sought to close down the promotion, remove content and contain the blunder. 

Walker’s apologised for the offensive material but not before the media had criticised the brand and shared much of the maverick imagery. 

This BBC report provides details:

Walkers Crisps Gary Lineker campaign suffers Twitter sabotage