"Halt! Drop the Coke, and put your hands in the air!"
That's a shout that may become common this summer, in the midst of Coca-Cola's (NYSE: KO) new "Unexpected Summer" sweepstakes promotion. For the next several months, any given multipack of the world's favorite carbonated sugar water could contain one of 120 special high-tech "cell-cans." Anyone lucky enough to come into possession of one of the coveted contraptions will find it contains not a tasty beverage, but rather an electronic gizmo incorporating at once a cell phone, GPS device, microphone, speaker, and keypad.
The promotion is supposed to incorporate two surprises: The first is finding one of the winning cell-cans. The second has a new twist. Find a cell-can, and you do not get to collect your winnings right away. Rather, you have to call Coke HQ on the cell-can, accept the contest terms, then carry the gizmo around with you until, at an unexpected time and place, a special ops team from Coke homes in on the cell-can's GPS device, and swoops down on the (now-maybe-not-feeling-so-) lucky winner to award the prize. The prize could be anything from a new Chevy SUV (courtesy of General Motors (NYSE: GM)), to a chance to win $1 million at Harrah's (NYSE: HET), to a Disney (NYSE: DIS) vacation.
Pretty cool so far, huh? Well, the U.S. military is less than enthused about the idea. In a move reminiscent of the 1999 "Furby fiasco" (in which the National Security Agency flew into a tizzy over the trendy Hasbro (NYSE: HAS) toy's ability to record speech), the military is urging servicemen to exercise caution in handling their beverages this summer. In a typically quintessential statement of the obvious, soldiers who discover themselves to be in possession of a can equipped with a disguised cell phone and GPS chip, have been told not to bring it into "classified meetings."
If I might borrow a phrase from the '90s: Well, duh!
In the end, all this brouhaha can do nothing but good for Coke. After all, there is no such thing as bad publicity, right? Maybe if this story gets more press play, Coke could even capitalize on it with a new advertising tag line: Live dangerously: Drink Coke.
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Fool contributor Rich Smith
owns shares in Hasbro, but not in any other company mentioned in this article.
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