Coca-Cola’s "Open Happiness" global marketing campaign kicked off in January 2009, when Cee Lo Green and Janelle Monae appeared in a music video that exclusively debuted on FOX's American Idol.

A year later, the "Open Happiness" theme took a tangible, and unforgettable form — a vending machine that appeared in the common room of St. John’s University in New York. It was rigged to dispense flowers, pizza and a six-foot sub resulting in a viral swish of happiness, generating more than 1 million views in the first week and still attracting comments 2 million views later.

The campus Coke machine stunt migrated to London, and morphed into a Hug Machine at the National University of Singapore in a gestural marketing stunt where a squeeze yielded a soda. Since then the Coca-Cola Happiness machine has popped up in local activations around the world, in markets including India, Buenos Aires, Indonesia, Tokyo, Istanbul for a special Valentine's Day stunt, and back to Singapore, this time promoting recycling in June.Continue reading...

Absolut is building on its long collaboration with musical and visual artists from Spike Lee to Damien Hirst with a black-and-white film, “Cee Lo Distilled,” following a day in the life of Gnarls Barkley’s Cee Lo Green. The trailer (above) has already been released, with part 1 of the film debuting June 27 and part 2 coming out July 6, both on Absolut’s Facebook page.

But wait! There’s more. As part of Green’s partnership with Absolut, the singer will be a “guest editor” on Absolut’s Facebook page for 10 days surrounding the film’s launch with a Facebook app, “Forget You” (a reference to the clean version of his hit single) that will allow Cee Lo to “send a custom video message direct, commenting on friends’ Relationship Status updates.” Who knows what he might have to say, especially if he’s been at that Absolut!Continue reading...

Trending on YouTube today is the above video by Grammy-winning artist Cee Lo Green. And no, it's not Forget You, but it's pretty close.

The song/music video is titled Thank You, and directed at volunteer firefighters, not evil ex-girlfriends. Green partnered with Duracell to pay tribute to the National Volunteer Fire Council and help promote the brand's Power Those Who Protect Us program, which encourages the public to donate batteries to raise funds and awareness for America's volunteer firefighters.

Green has a personal reason for revamping his hit song as a VFD tribute: the Atlanta native's mother was a volunteer firefighter who, when he was a teenager, was rescued from a near-fatal car accident by volunteer firefighters.Continue reading...

Absolut Vodka is lighting up the night in Brazil. It's running a social media-generated street spectacle that showcases an unusual form of art: “light writing,” with the limited-edition Absolut Glimmer bottle as the pen.

The campaign crowdsources suggestions from participants, light-writing their answers to the question, “What unusual thing are you doing now?“ One hundred answers will be “written” by young master calligrapher Haruo Kaneko using a neon light-filled Absolut bottle, with the images captured by up-and-coming photographer Gustavo Ferri.Continue reading...