Campaign

Tweet for Tea

the rundown

Since launch, sampling has been key to the BOS Ice Tea marketing strategy. This innovative South African brand firmly believes that the product quality is such that a can in hand is the very best marketing tool to their disposal. Our job was to come up with an innovative sampling mechanic that would put BOS Ice Tea a step ahead of the crowd and introduce it to the rest of the world. We wanted to link the real life experience of tasting BOS Ice Tea into something that is immediately share-able via people's social networks.

The Building Blocks

We conceptualised and produced BEV, the first ever tweet-activated vending machine. We got our hands on a Bevmax 4-45 vending machine, and proceeded to showcase its inner-workings with microphones, cameras, lights and speakers through on-machine displays. We then integrated BEV with the Twitter API and now she happily dispenses an ice cold BOS Ice Tea whenever someone tweets the hashtag #BOSTWEET4T. And thanks to her nifty geo-location feature, BEV can even tell if the person tweeting is close enough to her to dispense their ice tea.

Geo APIs
Twitter geo-location
Social
Twitter
Video
YouTube

The Votes

The Details

Agency

Cow Africa,
Raak

Brand

Bos Ice Tea

Targeted Regions

Africa

Marketing Objective

Launch Date

June 15, 2012

The Team

Cow Africa www.cowafrica.com
Donald Swanepoel, Creative Director
Larry Leyden, Account Manager
Rouleaux van der Merwe, Illustrator
Raak www.wewillraakyou.com
Adriaan Pelzer, Tech lead
Bos Ice Tea

The Stats

5 team members working on this project
70 pieces of media coverage
5 million impressions on Twitter

The Results

These days we often forget and take the wonders of technology like the Internet for granted. BEV was an instant hit with consumers. Some jumped for joy and some squealed with delight when their tweet triggered the machine. Through social media the campaign spread quickly across the globe and very soon we were featured on the BBC, Forbes and AFP to name a few. Coverage started appearing in France, Italy, Spain, China, India and we received calls from a number of brands who wanted tweet-activated vending machines of their own.