Coca-Cola’s Friendship Machine Rewards Cooperation With Cokes 

The game of vending machine one-upsmanship between Coca-Cola and PepsiCo continues with Coke’s “Friendship Machine.”

Coca-Cola actually planted the machines in Argentina last August to celebrate International Friendship Day, but just this week uploaded the video to its YouTube channel. The machines appear to be about 12 feet tall and requires that you ask a buddy for a boost to use it. Coke rewards that bit of cooperation by dispensing two Cokes instead of one.

The program plays off of Coke’s “Happiness Machine” viral video of 2010, which shows a Coke machine spitting out free soda and pizzas to a group of delighted students. Coke also updated that idea in February with a “Happiness Truck” video that features a Coca-Cola truck giving out Cokes along with surfboards, beach toys and sunglasses.

PepsiCo responded to Coke’s experiments this week with a real-life vending machine that let you gift free Pepsis to friends and strangers via a text message.

 

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