(BTW This might be a great reason for people to have an account with, tied to their Facebook or Twitter accounts) This could be done by making the machine accessible to nearby smart phones. Maybe people can name their drinks and take credit for their creation. In a perfect world, this voting would be personalized. To help mix up selection, the machine should also highlight recent choices or randomized choices to help ensure that a few custom drinks don’t runaway with the voting. This would serve as a mechanism to obtain “votes” for new flavors that expert users create. There are a number of game design principles we could apply here.įirst, the machine could highlight the “top” custom flavors that have been recently ordered on the machine. Coke Zero with Lemon? Whatever floats your boat.Ī very small set of options could really open up thousands of possibilities: Want a Barq’s Root beer with Cherry? You got it. With a few simple variables, Coke could take this machine from offering 100 different drinks to thousands.
#BIG GIANT BIG MAC WITH A DIET COKE SOFTWARE#
The first step in redesigning the software on the Coke Freestyle is to start crowd sourcing new flavors. While the software on the machine is extremely primitive, it’s this networked capability that has the potential to turn the Coke Freestyle into a game changing marketing machine. Nominally, this exists so that the machine can report daily on its supply levels, allowing service to know which cartridges need restocking.
Most exciting of all, the machine is equipped with a Verizon USB wireless modem, and is IP-capable. My six year old, for example, delights in flavors of Sprite he never imagined (including a distinctly fluorescent purple “Grape Sprite”). Thus, a small number of core flavors and accent flavors can deliver a truly breathtaking variety of soft drinks. It combines these with a water source and carbonation on demand based with varying portions of each. Coke, Sprite, Diet Coke, etc) and smaller flavor syrups (vanilla, lime, sugar-free vanilla, etc). It seems to have two types of cartridges: large bulky core soft drink syrups (e.g. The Coke Freestyle may look like a vending machine, but it’s internals look more like a giant inkjet printer. Obviously, coming from the social web, I have a particular angle on how I would leverage this new machine in the marketplace.
You can order any one of over 100 different varieties of soft drink, ranging from flavored Dasani water to my personal (and discontinued) favorite: Diet Vanilla Coke.Īfter playing with the machine for a few months, I’ve realized that Coca-Cola is sitting on a massive marketing opportunity with his machine, if they execute it aggressively. The Freestyle is a modern soda fountain wrapped in a vending machine. One of the best features of the new building that LinkedIn opened up at 2051 Stierlin Court in Mountain View is the new Coca-Cola Freestyle.