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Author
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Topic: Coca-Cola FREESTYLE...the future of bad soda
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 11-15-2014 12:46 PM
It was pretty clear to me from the start that these machines were conceived and designed as little more than marketing devices.
That's not really a problem. A company (or anybody) has the right to market their product in whatever way they see fit as long as it is legal. (I don't see legality as an issue here.) I do have a problem with marketing at the expense of providing a good product and pushing it off on the public as some kind of improvement when it is really little more than window dressing.
Most people just want to drink Coke. Why should they have to play a stinking video game in order to get it? Why should people have to stand in line while other people, in front of them, fuss with a complex machine? All they really want to do is drink a tasty beverage.
As we have seen, getting a tasty beverage from a Freestyle machine is little more than a crap shoot. You'll get *A* beverage but, unless the machine has had the correct software updates, it might or might not be actually tasty.
As we have seen, pouring a beverage, whether it is actually tasty or not, is a complex affair of pressing virtual buttons on a touch screen which often does not respond to touch then filling a cup with ice from an ice dispenser that sorta-kinda works but which often fills your cup with ice until it overflows. Then, finally, after you have gotten wet hands from a drippy nozzle and after you have overflowed your cup, yet again, with fizzy, foamy, syrupy liquid, you wind up with a product that only loosely resembles Coca Cola.
If you don't believe me, go sit at a table, ten feet away from one of these machines, and watch customers try to use them. It is actually funny to watch people try to use them! (I'm not laughing at the people. I'm laughing at what the machines make the people do just to get a drink.)
This whole Freestyle thing is nothing more than empty marketing designed to make "impressions" on customers and to provide a "fresh" public image but which doesn't really give what it claims to do in the first place.
Maybe you could claim that this is false advertising but, honestly, I'd say that's a stretch. It's not illegal but neither do I find it moral to use "smoke and mirrors" advertising at the expense of proving a good product.
Bottom line: Freestyle = Crapola.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 11-16-2014 05:40 PM
quote: Randy Stankey
Most people just want to drink Coke. Why should they have to play a stinking video game in order to get it? Why should people have to stand in line while other people, in front of them, fuss with a complex machine? All they really want to do is drink a tasty beverage.
Sounds like the perfect solution for locations were gambling and slot machines aren't legalized. Give those things a coin slot. Payout will be in "tasty" beverages rather than coins.
quote: Randy Stankey
As we have seen, pouring a beverage, whether it is actually tasty or not, is a complex affair of pressing virtual buttons on a touch screen which often does not respond to touch then filling a cup with ice from an ice dispenser that sorta-kinda works but which often fills your cup with ice until it overflows. Then, finally, after you have gotten wet hands from a drippy nozzle and after you have overflowed your cup, yet again, with fizzy, foamy, syrupy liquid, you wind up with a product that only loosely resembles Coca Cola.
In the near future, you will not only be given a cup, but your own bolt-on-nozzle, a pair of latex gloves and a manual.
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 11-16-2014 11:56 PM
quote:
Sounds like the perfect solution for locations were gambling and slot machines aren't legalized. Give those things a coin slot. Payout will be in "tasty" beverages rather than coins.
Back in the 80's, I remember stories about Coke machines where you had to play a little game in which you had to make the LED display spell "C-O-K-E" by hitting a button to stop the randomly changing letters. Apparently that idea didn't last a month before they had to pull those machines.
I don't remember the details but I do remember reading about it.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
In the near future, you will not only be given a cup, but your own bolt-on-nozzle, a pair of latex gloves and a manual.
... AND a cup with an RFID tag on the bottom of it which tracks what kind of beverage you choose, how many times you refill and that information will be linked back to the credit card number you used at the POS station when you bought your drink so that everything you drink can be used as marketing data.
I'm only half joking, here... ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
quote: Mike Blakesley
Oh I agree peole are clueless on how to use them. I was stuck in a line behind a lady in a Wendy's yesterday in fact.
While I think that "people" as a group are clueless and, often, downright stupid, I don't agree that "individuals" are stupid unless they are placed in situations where unexpected things happen.
For example, people who are suddenly trapped in a burning building can behave irrationally, for instance, by jumping from windows in high-rise buildings.
Freestyle machines place people in unfamiliar situations when they are forced to make selections on a screen, reach inside small compartments, press levers and push a flashing button just to get a drink.
All that when they just wanted a drink. What they get, instead, is a cup full of something that sorta-kinda, loosely resembles Coke.
It is the machines that are "making" people stupid when they are forced into unfamiliar situations for no tangible reason except for what I like to call "empty marketing."
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