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Pepsi Machines Get Semi-Social

  • Mashable, Thursday, April 28, 2011 11:44 AM
Combining two of today's hottest marketing trends, digital out-of-home and social, Pepsi is testing a vending machine that lets consumers send free soda to friends. With PepsiCo's Social Vending Machine, users select a beverage and enter the recipient's name, mobile number and personalized text message with a code redeemable at another vending machine. "Consumers can personalize the message with a short video recorded by the machine," explains Mashable.

Says Mikel Durham, chief innovation officer at PepsiCo Foodservice: "The new machine 'extends our consumers' social networks beyond the confines of their own devices and transforms a static, transaction-oriented experience into something fun." Yet, Mashable is critical of the fact that the initiative fails to factor Facebook or Twitter -- calling the absence "a glaring omission." Said to be experimenting with the social possibilities of it own vending machines, look for Coca-Cola take the idea to the next level.

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