DUBAI // An online advertising campaign by Coca-Cola showing the company handing out excess baggage tags at the airport to travellers has been viewed almost one million times on YouTube.
The clip “Coca-Cola –Taking Home Happiness” begins by showing passengers checking in at Dubai International Airport to head off to various destinations to see family. “It’s been five years since I spent Christmas in the Philippines,” a man says.
“My father is ill,” says another. “It’s a surprise, no one knows that we’re coming home.”
The video then displays the caption, “But no one likes to go empty-handed”.
The travellers describe the items they are carrying back home: school supplies and toys for children, a tablet computer and milk and nappies for a baby. But at check-in some of them find they are over their luggage limit.
“I really want to surprise them, but if I’m not able to carry this, it’s going to be a waste,” a traveller said.
At that point, a woman in a Coca-Cola T-shirt and hat begins handing out bottles with a special label that, when peeled away, doubles as an excess baggage tag. “Coca-Cola has a gift for you,” she says as she gives passengers “an extra five kilos of happiness”.
By Thursday, the video had generated more than 987,000 hits since it was uploaded a month ago.
According to the website for Campaign Middle East magazine, Coco-Cola shot the video on December 22 with the cooperation of the airport.
Comments by viewers were overwhelmingly supportive of the company’s deeds. But not everyone took the company’s goodwill as an act of sincerity.
One commenter wrote: “Extra kg’s? Really? I expect so much more from a company the size of Coke.”
The campaign – which is available only in the UAE and Oman – is expected to expand with additional prizes like flight vouchers, TVs and mobile phones, the company said.
The video follows a similar online campaign last year which showed labour camps with Coca-Cola phone booths, into which bottle tops rather than coins could be fed to pay for international calls.
newsdesk@thenational.ae
