Vending machine creativity

Global - Coca-Cola has issued a public call for action to help come up with designs for a vending machine that embodies the ‘Coke experience of the future', to reside in virtual online community Second Life.

The contest, dubbed the Virtual Thirst competition, is open to all and submissions will be accepted through a variety of formats within Second Life, YouTube and MySpace.

"Put simply, we've invited the world to use the Second Life platform to design and prototype the ultimate Coke machine -- something that delivers an innovative, engaging experience in Second Life, as defined by its community of residents -- it could play music from a jukebox, or display fun animation and video, or transform the user's experience and capabilities in some positive way," Michael Donnelly, director of global interactive marketing for The Coca-Cola Company said.

The entry deadline is 25 May 2007 and the winning concept will be built into Second Life reality. The news marks the Coke's first experiment within the community of Second Life and contest details can be found at virtualthirst.com.

"Our goal is to enable individual creativity in pursuit of a ‘vending' machine that can exist only in your wildest imagination. Virtual worlds make it possible for such innovations to occur, and we selected Second Life as the most conducive to this experiment," Donnelly said.