A fairy-like universe worthy of the best animation films, strange creatures who invite you to play with them—no, you’re not looking at the latest hip video game but at the trendy new recruiting platform launched by Coca-Cola. The whole thing was designed to create a buzz, and it’s working! Welcome to Happiness Factory.
The interface is part of a vast global communication campaign used by Coca-Cola across all media—television, radio, movies, Internet and mobiles. . . Happiness Factory is everywhere! The first episode in 2006 was enormously successful, even receiving a Silver Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival in 2007. The second part features the same characters, drawing the consumer into the dreamlike, fantastic world of a soft drink vending machine. By using its advertising saga to create a trendy recruiting site, the renowned beverage manufacturer is making Internet central to its communication strategy by playing the interactivity and youth card.
Once on the platform, visitors have three choices: “Watch the Movie” (advertising), “Apply Now,” and “Start Working.” The characters then invite candidates to explore job openings, each wilder than the last, via little Flash animations: Kissy Puppy, for example, gives out kisses. You’ll probably have caught on that the whole thing is just for fun—the site is mainly designed to get people talking, generate traffic and collect a maximum of e-mail addresses, but not really to help candidates land a job! If you want to apply, you’ll still have to do it via the regular recruiting site.
Happiness Factory videos whizzed their way around the blogosphere in record time, assuring success for Coca-Cola, which made them into a marketing event. The recruiting site created the expected buzz, and rightly so. One of the questions on the form to be filled out, obviously intended for young people: “Do you sometimes burp after drinking a Coke?” No doubt a key question for Coca-Cola’s Human Resources Director!