Branded vending machines have the potential to be experiential marketing gold. Offering consumers a highly interactive experience within a comfortable setting, a creative vending stunt can serve as a powerful platform for sharing key brand messages.
Big names such as Coca-Cola, Nike and Milka have all used quirky vending machines to great effect in recent years. Reece’s ‘spooning’ vending machine and Farnham’s scream-activated beer dispenser are two of our all-time favourites.
Now sports drink brand Gatorade has caught our attention with its imaginative take on this popular experiential format.
To promote the benefits of its drinks for replenishing the electrolytes lost during exercise, the brand set up a ‘talking’ vending machine where sweat was the only accepted currency!
The brand replaced an ordinary vending machine in a busy gym. When thirsty gym-goers approached the Gatorade machine to purchase a replenishing beverage after their workout, they were surprised to find that it didn’t accept money. Instead, the talking machine issued a challenge: sweat it to get it.
The machine scanned the person standing in front of it and measured the body heat generated through exercise. If their temperature was below a certain level, they were judged to have not been working hard enough. The cheeky machine told them to ‘try harder’ and offered exercise suggestions such as squats, high jumps and, of course, the dreaded press up.
Having given it another go, those who were judged to have worked up enough of a sweat were only then rewarded with a chilled Gatorade drink.
See the cheeky vending machine at work here: