fastcompany:

How Coca-Cola Used Vending Machines To Try To Unite The People Of India And Pakistan 

Relations between India and Pakistan are marked by many things—and happiness is generally not one of them. But Coca-Cola recently brought people from both nations together—or at least brought citizens of both countries face to face—over vending machines.

No ordinary vending machines, the Small World Machines, created by Coke and Leo Burnett, were equipped with full-length webcams that allowed participants to see each other and interact in real time. They were placed in malls—one in Lahore, Pakistan, the other in New Dehli, India—in March. 

As part of its larger mission to associate its product with happiness 

“Coke has always been a brand that’s about positivity and optimism, and we’re always talking about how we can provoke just a little bit more happiness in the world, and increasingly we’ve tried to create experiences to actually bring people together in intimate moments of connectivity,” Jantos Tulloch says.

“Telling this story through the lens of India and Pakistan really came from our team on the ground there who knows better than anyone that the people really want more positive connection and more positive communication between them.”

Read the full story here.