Believe in Fairies bearing gifts...

Ok, brace yourselves, I admit that it's been a while since I believed in the tooth fairy.  Luckily I don't think I have any readers aged below 6. If I do, go and play outside immediately.  Fairies at the bottom of the garden however, are an entirely different matter.

Or at least they are very real for my brothers who live in Sydney, as Coke launched the Coke Machine Fairy project last week. It's a great example of brands experimenting with location to create brand / consumer involvement, and a nice build on the Coke Happiness vending machine work they've done over the last year.

The basic premise is this.. for a week, the Coke Machine Fairy will be dropping off a special prize-winning bottle of Coke per day  in various vending machines around the city.

They are announcing clues to the special bottle whereabouts via their FourSquare and  Twitter feeds... Checking in as they go leaving clues as to where they are headed and then having set up various Coke vending machines as locations on FourSquare.

  Then challenging people to find them, and shout out about having done so to claim their prize.

 
Nice!  I love this for several reasons:

• It invites participation in a social gaming kinda way (and let's fact it life's one big game if you think about it)
• It engenders a sense of time limited competition (who can get there first) and we're a react to deadline based race these days
• It harnesses the power of (accessible) location based technology to give human interaction with the brand, 
• It requires the winners to shout out about their involvement with the campaign = influential reach / spread of a brand message

 Oh, and just that little detail of contributing to the brand equity, reinforcing it's happiness work, cos everyone likes free stuff, even if they've had to do a little work for it.  :-)  You can bet your Aussie dollar that those who've won, or been beaten to it are telling their mates about it too.

Over the last few days I've seen the prizes claimed in anything between 4 and 12 minutes after they've been planted.  (click to enlarge)

How's that for direct response & the power of the hyper-local capability that so many of us carry in our pockets these days (i.e your mobile)?  Really nice to see a brand experimenting.