#SayItWithCoke

Excuse crappy picture quality

A message regarding a surprise for you and your friends. You are asked to give them the Twitter handles of your five besties on Twitter. I would have ignored the message completely, except I knew the person who sent me the message and even though it reminded me of those pranks where an app asks for your crushes and then those names are sent to one of your friends, I was supposed to give names of my closest friends on Twitter. No way can that be one of those childish pranks. So I filled the form and truth be told, forgot about it after that.

Then another message, this time about the surprise itself and of course I agreed to attend without considering how awkward and asocial I am at social gatherings. I went for the event and loved it. It was fun and the people were super nice and awesome. I met new people. I got a bottle with my Twitter handle on it and I got a few bottle to give my friends too. So they too get a bottle with their Twitter handle on it.

Criticism (of other people)

How is it a #TweepsSurprise if only a selected few were invited?

I’m quite sure there are more than a thousand Tweeps who live in and around Colombo. Even if only 25% are active on social media, that’s still 250 people. This is a large number and obviously, not all of them can be invited for an event of this scale. But it’s not only about how many can be invited. If everyone got a bottle with their name on it, those bottles won’t be as special as they are now. It might be unfair that only a few people were invited but can you really expect Coca Cola to hold an event for all tweeps and give them all bottles with their names on it?

The event was also not for the 'cool crowd.' I'm not saying the people invited weren't cool. They were. But I was invited, and an event I was invited to is definitely not limiting it to the 'cool crowd.' Stop thinking there are these cliques in Twitter. There are groups of friends because they hangout in real life. But none of them are big-headed Tweeps with a 'we are cooler than you' attitude. They are simple, fun-loving and nice. The only person who has an attitude problem is he who keeps throwing a fit every time there is some gathering of Tweeps.

Yes, this is a bottle of glue.Use it to seal your lips.

“I’m not cool enough for a coke bottle with my name on the label so I’ll just write my name on a bottle of coconut oil”

Two words: Grow up!

Why are you being silly and childish? Okay, so you may think it's a fun thing to do. Write your name on a bottle and join the crowd. It’s all for fun right? But no. Those pictures were accompanied by tweets that were lame, childish and immature. Most of them were another way of saying, “I wasn’t part of this. I’m jealous and pissed and feeling left out and this is my way of telling myself that I’m not bothered by the fact that 1. I wasn’t invited to the event and 2. No one thinks I’m a close friend on Twitter.”

I would have loved to tell these people to write their name on a bottle of poison but I don’t promote suicide.

If your name was on a label, it's because someone considered you to be a close friend. Clearly, your angry tweets about having your name on a label is going to make them reconsider their choice of friends. Appreciate the gesture, dude. You may not drink coke. You may not promote it, but this doesn't mean you need to shout like a lunatic about how the company is infringing your rights by using your Twitter handle to promote a product you don't even use. I rarely drink coke, I don't exactly promote it. But I'm over the moon about the fact that there's a bottle with my Twitter handle on it. And I'm happy the people who I considered to be close friends are also happy (or are at least not throwing a tantrum) about the labels with their Twitter handles on them.

Campaign was a failure

No! It was an amazing idea and this is coming from someone who dislikes PR companies and promotional events of this sort. I got to meet so many people and even though I’m awkward and can’t speak much with people, I enjoyed the event. And I now have a label with my Twitter handle on it and I got to be part of this amazing idea of Coca Cola Sri Lanka. Coke won’t have bottles in Sri Lanka with names on them. Disappointing, right? We see those posts by people in other countries about all these cool campaigns or projects or whatever they are called done by companies. We get nothing of that sort. But Coke has come up with an idea that is truly Sri Lanka. A few weeks ago, someone tweeted asking about the last time we told our parents we love them. It made me realize it’s not something we do over here. We rarely tell people how we really feel and now, we can do that with coke bottles. And the best part is, there are bottles with Sinhala and Tamil phrases too, so regardless of who you are talking with and what language you use, you can #SayItWithCoke.


And finally, thank you to the organizers. You guys are awesome :)