They say money can’t buy you happiness, but if you got free money for doing nothing, you’d probably be pretty happy. That’s what Coca Cola is betting on with its “The ATM of Happiness” in Spain. The one catch is that you have to share the money with others.
As part of Coke’s ongoing Share Happiness campaign, McCann Spain came up with “The ATM of Happiness” to encourage people to share and make others happy. The ATM gave 100 euros to random passersby who decided to interact with the machine. Instead of options to withdraw or deposit or check your balance, the special ATM showed options on how to share the money.
According to PSFK, Coca-Cola doesn’t know what all participants ended up doing with the free money, but some did share their stories. For example someone bought basketballs and gave them to local kids, someone bought food to share with someone else and someone got two show tickets for an elderly couple.
This is a really cool social—as in real-life social, not Facebook or Twitter for once—experiment from a big brand. It’s a really creative way to encourage people to pay it forward and share with others. And it’s not the first time Coke has played around with technology and helping people give back to others. Coke won a Cannes Lion last year for it’s online “vending machine” that allowed people to send free Cokes to people across the world via text message.
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