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Pepsi Like Machine

You walk up to the Pepsi’s “Like Machine”, tap “Like” for Pepsi on Facebook using your smartphone or the machine’s touchscreen, and it dispenses a soda. Simple rule. Instant reward.

The Like Machine mechanic

Coca-Cola has created a whole bunch of innovative vending machines over the last couple of years. Pepsi, on the other hand, created only a couple. Now to add to that collection, Pepsi piloted its latest vending machine. Dubbed the “Like Machine”, it was programmed to dispense soda to fans who “Like” the brand on Facebook via their smartphone or via the touchscreen on the machine.

For brands using event-led FMCG activations, the value of this mechanic is that it turns a familiar digital action into a visible physical conversion point.

The business logic is clear: tie a low-friction social action directly to a branded product moment.

Where did Pepsi pilot it

Pepsi piloted the machine at a Beyonce concert in Antwerp, Belgium and received a good response. So do not be surprised if you see more of them popping up nearby.

Why “Like” works as currency here

The exchange is clear. A lightweight social action becomes the trigger for a real-world payoff. The behaviour is familiar, the barrier is low, and the moment is easy to understand even in a noisy live-event setting. The real question is whether the action feels effortless enough to be worth doing on the spot. This is a smart activation rule because it converts a familiar digital gesture into an immediate physical reward, which reduces hesitation and lifts participation.

Extractable takeaway: When a brand uses a familiar low-friction action as the price of entry, more people complete the interaction because they understand the trade instantly.

What to steal from a like-for-reward mechanic

Make the exchange instantly legible. One action. One reward. No interpretation required.
Use a behaviour people already do. “Like” is familiar, so the barrier to participation stays low in a live setting.
Keep the payoff immediate. The shorter the gap between action and reward, the higher the completion rate.
Measure conversion, not just buzz. Track attempts, successful dispenses, and incremental social lift during the activation window.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the Pepsi Like Machine?

It is a vending machine that dispenses a Pepsi to people who like the Pepsi brand on Facebook, either via their phone or on the machine touchscreen.

Why test this at a concert?

Concert crowds are already in a high-energy mindset and open to quick interactions. That makes participation fast and visible, which boosts word of mouth.

Why does this mechanic work so quickly?

Because the rule is easy to grasp and the reward is immediate. People do not need extra explanation to decide whether to participate.

What is the simplest lesson to copy?

Make the rule obvious, the action effortless, and the reward immediate. If any one of those is slow or unclear, participation drops.

What should you measure?

Participation rate per hour, completion rate (start to dispense), and the incremental social lift tied to the activation window.

Nike Football “My time is now”

In Puerta del Sol, Madrid’s epicenter, a huge Nike “static” banner behaves like a live scoreboard. As Euro 2012 conversations spike, the face on the banner changes. Each day, the Spanish player who dominates social chatter becomes the protagonist on the canvas. Two fan messages appear alongside him, selected from submissions flowing in through Nike’s Facebook experience.

What the campaign does in public

Turn real-time social conversation into real-world status. Then make “My Time Is Now” visible, in public, every day.

What Nike and DoubleYou build during Euro 2012

Nike works with DoubleYou on a real-time social media monitoring campaign focused on Spanish national-team players. The system tracks mentions and engagement across Facebook and Twitter, then turns that data into a live ranking.

Fans see the leaderboard through a custom Facebook app integrated into Nike Football Spain. The ranking updates continuously, creating a daily “who owns the moment” race that mirrors what is happening on the pitch.

How it works

Step 1. Capture the conversation in real time

The activation monitors references to players across Twitter and Facebook.

Step 2. Translate the conversation into a live ranking

Inside the Facebook experience, the campaign visualizes comments and produces an automatically updated ranking of who is generating the most conversation, refreshed minute by minute.

Step 3. Publish the result into the physical world

Each day, the player who attracts the most social conversation becomes the ambassador of Nike’s message “My Time Is Now” on the large-format placement in Puerta del Sol. A static billboard turns into an interactive billboard because it is connected to the live social pulse.

Step 4. Let fans write onto the execution

From the app, fans also submit messages linked to the player of the day. Nike selects two of those messages and publishes them next to the player on the banner.

In sports sponsorship, the scalable advantage is not just hearing fan momentum, but turning it into a public signal people can rally around.

Why this is more than “social listening”

The real question is how to make live conversation feel consequential while the event is still unfolding. This is not monitoring for reporting. It is monitoring as a publishing engine. Nike turns fan conversation into a daily public decision about who carries the brand line. That mechanism works because it converts abstract buzz into visible status, giving fans a reason to watch, react, and return.

Extractable takeaway: Real-time marketing gets more powerful when the signal changes something public, visible, and easy to argue about, not when it just updates a dashboard.

The business intent is to keep fans returning to Nike’s owned experience during the tournament, while tying that repeat attention back to sponsored players and the brand line.

The social layer has consequence. The ranking determines who gets featured publicly.
The physical layer gives the digital behavior weight. People do not just see a number in an app. They see a player crowned in the center of Madrid.
The loop is fast enough to feel like sport. The leaderboard updates continuously, so fans experience momentum, not a static end-of-day recap.

The line that makes the whole thing sticky

At the end, the leading player is set to bear Nike’s message of “My Time Is Now”.

And the player is…

What to steal from Nike’s live ranking billboard

Turn chatter into a scoreboard: Convert real-time conversation into points people can instantly understand and debate.
Reward the behaviour you want repeated: Make fans check back by updating standings during the event, not after it.
Use sponsorship as a story engine: Anchor the mechanic to the athletes you sponsor so the brand connection stays tight.
Make the output social by default: Put the ranking in a format that is easy to share and argue about inside the platform.
End with a single “hero moment”: Let one clear winner carry the slogan so the campaign lands as a climax, not a dashboard.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the campaign in one sentence?

A real-time social monitoring system ranks Spanish players by conversation volume and makes the top player the daily face of a live billboard in Puerta del Sol.

Where do fans see the ranking?

Fans see the ranking in a custom Facebook app integrated into Nike Football Spain.

What makes this different from a normal “second screen” mechanic?

The data output is not just a dashboard. It changes a public, real-world media placement and publishes user messages alongside the hero player.

Why does the billboard matter more than the app alone?

The billboard turns digital attention into visible public status, so the campaign feels culturally present rather than trapped inside a social feed.

What is the repeatable pattern for brands?

If you can connect live signals to live publishing, you turn attention into status. That is how real-time becomes culturally meaningful.

Sky Company: Air Check-in

Free fall is not the moment you expect a social check-in. But that is exactly the hook behind Air Check-in, an app that lets parachutists post to Facebook while they are still in the air.

Parachuting specialists Sky Company wanted to promote their Facebook fan page. With ageisobar Brazil they developed the Air Check-in app. It lets users take pictures during the jump while recording their height, then attempts to post the details to the user’s Facebook timeline via 3G. If reception drops at altitude, it stores the check-in and publishes later.

How the mechanic earns attention

The mechanism is a simple risk-reward loop. Capture proof while falling. Attach altitude data. Post immediately if the network allows, or queue it for later so the story still lands. The social post itself carries a built-in path back to Sky Company’s Facebook presence, turning each jump into a shareable referral moment.

In consumer-facing mobile activations, the strongest ideas turn a real-world constraint (connectivity, timing, attention) into part of the narrative rather than a limitation to hide.

Why it lands

This works because it makes the experience legible to spectators. “I checked in while skydiving” is an instantly repeatable line, and the altitude detail adds credibility. It is also practical marketing. The product being sold is not the app, it is the jump itself, with the social artifact functioning as both proof and invitation. This is the kind of activation worth copying because it designs for the primary failure mode instead of pretending it will not happen. The real question is whether your sharing mechanic still produces a clean proof moment when the environment misbehaves.

Extractable takeaway: If you want social sharing to feel earned, tie it to a moment the audience already considers extreme, then package the proof in a format that posts cleanly even when the network is unreliable.

How to build a shareable proof moment

Make the “impossible” part measurable. Altitude data turns a claim into a receipt.
Design for network failure. Queue-and-post-later, meaning capture now and publish when signal returns, keeps the promise even when connectivity drops.
Build referral into the artifact. If the post points back to the brand destination, every participant becomes distribution.
Let the participant be the headline. The story is “what I did,” not “what the brand says.”

The same “on the fly” logic shows up in an earlier parachuting campaign for Hotels.com. The focus there is the brand’s high-speed mobile booking app, positioned as easy enough to use while airborne. To prove it, they team up with extreme athlete and stuntman JT Holmes for a stunt demonstration that dramatizes booking a room mid-jump.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Air Check-in in one sentence?

A skydiving app that captures photos and altitude during a jump and posts a Facebook check-in immediately if possible, or saves it to publish later if reception drops.

Why is “store it for later” a key part of the idea?

Because it protects the core promise. The story still posts even when the most likely failure mode, weak connectivity at altitude, happens.

What is the marketing value of adding altitude to the post?

It makes the claim credible and more shareable. The audience can immediately see this was not staged on the ground.

Why include the Hotels.com example in the same post?

It reinforces the same creative pattern. Use an extreme context to prove a mobile behavior is fast and simple, then let the spectacle carry the message.

What is the transferable pattern behind Air Check-in?

Turn a real constraint into the mechanic, make the proof measurable, and design the sharing flow so it still publishes cleanly when conditions are imperfect.