In the last several years there have been great strides in 3D Printing. Practical applications have grown in numbers and there appear to be limitless possibilities to what industries it can be utilized. According to Forbes product development is up from 29% in 2017 to 39% in 2018. And, “93% of companies using 3D printing in 2018 were able to gain competitive advantages including time-to-market and flexing to support shorter production runs for customers” (Forbes). Manufacturers are using the ability to print 3D products to increase speed, customization, and quality throughout their businesses. But there are other applications than just manufacturing goods. Marketers have taken the concept of 3D printing and have begun incorporating it into their promotional strategies.
Thanks to the hype and interest around 3D printing and other innovative technologies marketers are seeing new ways to promote their products. An excellent example of these new marketing promotions was when Coca-Cola needed a strategy to market their new mini bottles. Coca-Cola created a contest in Israel that would allow consumers to design and submit a 3D model of themselves for a chance to win a trip to the Coca-Cola factory where they could create the actual 3D rendering of their submission. The campaign was a gigantic success and spread to all major news stations, newspapers, magazines, and generated a major social media attraction. More than 100,000 people downloaded the app within the first week making it the #1 app in Israel’s app store. And even more remarkable than that, Coca-Cola met its year-end goal for mini-bottle sales in only 2 months!
Coca-Cola recognized an opportunity and approached the situation by utilizing the 6M’s of promotion planning. Coca-Cola’s breakdown was essentially:
Market – Youth to middle age soda drinkers who utilize social media on a daily basis and have interest in up and coming technologies
Mission – Get people to download and share the app while drinking/purchasing coke mini bottles
Message – Participate in the contest, download the app, drink mini-bottles, and share the experience for a chance to win
Media – Social media will be the primary distribution means of the message after announcements of the contest on traditional platforms such as television, radio, etc.
Money – Coke spends roughly $4 Billion in advertising each year globally; this campaign would run close to similar campaigns its performs each year in the region
Measurement – in total sales of mini bottles
The exploitation of a technology like 3D printing would not have been thought to be a tool for marketing in the past. But Coca-Cola, having more than enough capital to invest in advertising, found an innovative way to apply a new piece of tech to their advantage. Even though Coca-Cola’s Market didn’t stray too far from its normal consumers, its clear to see the payoff in terms of measurement of sales for mini bottles. This incorporation of promoting products through the use of emerging and trendy technologies is a massive advantage for marketers. There are countless other new technologies being developed each year in which marketing experts can begin to use by thinking outside the box. Can you imagine what other possibilities there
may be for 3D printing being used to market a product? There are already examples of Volkswagon using it to promote a new vehicle in Denmark. I’ll leave you with a few question to consider when reading your next article about 3D printing or emerging technologies… was this an out-of-the-box way to use technology to promote a product? Was it a brilliant implementation strategy on Coca-Cola’s part and the technology didn’t matter? Was it both? Or was this just another Coca-Cola commercial that didn’t matter because Coca-Cola’s brand sells itself? And lastly, could this same strategy be applied with the next product Coca-Cola chooses? Either way, it worked and I look I’ll be keeping my eye out for the next company to use 3D printing to promote its product.
Refernces:
Drupa (2017, September 29). 5 Ways How 3D Printing Takes Marketing to a New Level https://blog.drupa.com/en/5-ways-how-3d-printing-takes-marketing-to-a-new-level-2/
Columbus, Louis (2018, May 30). The State of 3D Printing, 2018 https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/05/30/the-state-of-3d-printing-2018/#abd07fe7b0a8
The 6M strategy seems very very useful for such campaigns. From market to measurement it is a near to perfect strategy to build a result oriented, data driven successful content marketing strategy.