Vending Machines Gone Smart: Christmas, Custom Condoms & Hugging
Forget snacks and sodas. It’s smart vending time!
Cereal bars and ice tea out of a machine? So yesterday! Can vending machines be something more than just machines selling stuff? Can vending be smart?
If we bring vending machines online, it can. If we combine machines with mobile apps, social media, creative marketing, social campaigns, interaction… it can!
Here at Netizens, we admire a lot of smart vending ideas. Ever seen one of Benefit’s cute pink vending machines at an airport? Or the pizza vending machine? Or the machine that rewards your yawn with a free coffee?
We look up to such creative marketing campaigns. We are all about smart vending. We too like to turn vending machines into something more. We like to turn them into unique experiences. And we have one guy here who’s just impossible when it comes to smart vending.
Meet Jonasz, the mastermind behind all this, and let’s take a smart vending tour around Netizens! :)
Christmas spirit out of a vending machine
We know it’s not quite Christmas yet, but the first smart vending case we want to tell you about is a special vending machine that prints out personalized Christmas gift bags. We created it together with Galeria Katowicka shopping mall, Visual Effect, and Sigma Group DK.
The process was simple: insert your name, the name of the recipient, choose the bag version you like best, press “Print” and enjoy your personalized gift bag. And not just that: feel the Christmas fever, feel the emotions, love, and caring. All out of a vending machine.
The machine was placed in the Galeria Katowicka shopping mall in Katowice (where Netizens is based). The Christmas campaign’s goal was to promote sales and to to boost the shopping center’s app’s download rate: only the app’s users were able to use the machine and get their own personalized gift bags.
The machine was available to customers for 10 days and printed out 1500 personalized Christmas gift bags. But we know it’s summer, so…
I want, I like, I have…
Something a bit more summer-y and spicy, for a change. Together with the buzz agency and SKYN, we created a vending machine that prints out… custom condoms. We wanted to promote safe sex in a creative, provocative, sexy way.
The process was simple and fun: get creative, finish the sentence, take a picture with your personalized condom and share it on social media right away if you like, press “Print” and enjoy safe sex! Safe sex made very custom, to be specific.
We built the vending machine from scratch, we took care of both hardware and software. You have no idea how hard it was to find the right kind of ink that could be used on the condoms’ packagings. But if paid off: the machine was a blast!
We printed out 2500 condoms in 4 cities at music and student festivals. Have you seen the long waiting lines in the video? :)
Employee appreciation out of a machine
We told you to forget snacks and sodas in vending machines, we know.
But don’t forget them just quite yet.
Remember our key to employee satisfaction, GoodieBox, and our case study? Goodie Box is a smart vending machine, too. It’s combined with a mobile app that allows our employees to send each other virtual points. Whenever a coworker is nice to us, we just send them a GoodieCoin to let them know
they are appreciated. The rewarded coworker goes to the vending machine
at any time and picks a snack they like (or something even more fun, like
a day off or a cinema ticket).
GoodieBox boosts productivity and employee satisfaction. Exchanging GoodieCoins for snacks really puts a smile on one’s face :) And speaking
of smiling…
Hugging & Smiling
The last smart vending case we want to tell you about is a machine that… wants to be hugged and smiled at!
The machine was designed for a shopping mall right before its grand opening. The campaign’s goal was to promote the new shopping center and to encourage people to visit it. The machine dispenses gifts (like cool coffee mugs) for hugging and smiling. Thanks to an ultrasonic proximity sensor and a smile detector, the machine can actually tell it’s being hugged or smiled at. Being rewarded for smiling and hugging — does it get any better? :)
In just one day, the machine was hugged and smiled at over 200 times!
And obviously it dispensed over 200 fun gifts for huggers and smilers :)
Smart future
Ok, we do have one more great smart vending case, but we are saving it for another blog post. Stay tuned :)
We are only getting started with smart vending here at Netizens. Our two main ideas for the future are:
A vending machine for lead generation
Lead generation is expensive, we all know that. How about an inexpensive smart vending machine that collects leads for you? A machine with a touch screen displaying a contact form, placed anywhere (airports, outdoor festivals, shopping malls) that instantly rewards the potential clients for sharing their personal data: with a special discount printed out on the spot,
a fancy gadget to pick up right away, etc.
A vending machine with freshly mixed post-workout protein shakes
With gyms becoming more and more automated, a vending machine that dispenses fresh protein shakes is a great way to replace costly shake bars at fitness clubs. The machine mixes the right ingredients and provides healthy shakes on the spot. It can be combined with a fitness mobile app.
To wrap this all up, again, we are only getting started when it comes to smart vending. We see vending machines as an amazing new distribution channel and an innovative way of building customer loyalty. Smart vending machines just naturally attract people’s attention. And we just loooove using that! :) Stay tuned for more smart vending cases and follow us here on Medium.com :)
