COKE’S HAPPINESS TRUCK MAKES ME HAPPY

It’s in Rio. And it’s making people happy. What a great truck idea. So simple. So on-brand. So universal. Check it out here.

EXPERIENTIAL GETS CROWDSOURCED

Love the thinking from Mountain Dew:

Typically, a brand event is at least months in the planning — or if not, likely requires hyper mode by the agencies handling it.

But while seat-of-the-pants activation may be inadvisable for most events, a 30-day, 69-city "grassroots" promotion tour that was part of Mountain Dew's year-long "DEWmocracy 2" campaign may point to an alternative worth considering.

In synch with DEWmocracy 2's mission of engaging fans by having them campaign and vote to determine which of three new Dew flavors would be rolled out by PepsiCo, the destinations, activities and venues for the "DEWmocracy: The Flavor Campaign" tour were also largely determined by fans.

The basic concept: Three mobile teams comprising agency/marketer reps and hardcore Dew fans — each team "campaigning" for its own Dew flavor (White Out, Typhoon or Distortion) — were sent on cross-country tours to engage people in the flavor competition/voting through live events over four weeks, starting May 1.

According to the article from MediaPost, "many event decisions were made on the fly, based on consumers' input via Twitter and a dedicated microsite. Fans also were urged to rally friends and families to participate in the events, post photos and video content online and vote for their favorite flavor.

The results were eye-opening, says Matt Statman, founder of Motive, the lead creative agency for the tour, who estimates that about 60% of tour activity decisions were made by consumers.

The teams distributed about 60,000 samples of the Dew flavors, made direct, in-person contact with more than 100,000 consumers, and generated more than 1.5 million total impressions in person, online and through social media."

MICRO-LOCAL KIT KAT FLAVORS THE RAGE IN JAPAN

"Developing an intimate understanding of the local market and targeting it creatively has earned Kit Kat the position of number one confectionery brand in Japan," according to this article on Springwise. Nestle's popular candy brand decided that local meant going really local.

Nestlé recently launched 19 new Kit Kat flavours in Japan that reflect food specialities of specific districts. Each flavour is sold exclusively in the region for which it was created, making the limited edition Kit Kats popular souvenirs for travellers.

Nineteen new flavors! Only available in the places that inspired them! Brilliant! Doesn't this make each flavor an experiential extension of the the master Kit Kat brand?

Check out the Japanese site here.