• The New York Times, Thursday, June 7, 2007 11:30 AM

Some marketing executives say Coca-Cola's new cell phone site for social networking, Sprite Yard, could become the BudTV of the soda world--a failed effort to build a community around a brand.

Sprite Yard was introduced in China last week, and Coca-Cola plans to extend it globally--and perhaps to other soda brands--over the next few years. It will be introduced in the U.S. this month. For now, Sprite Yard will function only on cell phones--the medium that Sprite's marketing team says is the most popular with teenagers. People will type in codes from Sprite bottle caps to redeem original content, like ring tones and short video clips called mobisodes.

It's a big challenge for Sprite Yard to become a media destination in its own right. Advertisers generally leave it to media companies to create content, because capturing an audience is not easy. "Nobody wants to go hang out with Sprite," says Chad Stoller, executive director of emerging platforms for digital agency Organic.

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