What do you get if you mix Mentos mint candies and Diet Coke?
A. a science experiment
B. a liquid mess
C. a marketing coup
For Mentos, at least, the answer is a resounding C.
Hundreds of amateur videos have flooded the Internet in recent months showing an oddball experiment: people dropping the quarter-size Mentos candies into bottles of Diet Coke. The combination results in a geyser of soda that shoots as high as 20 feet into the air.
“It’s a funny thing to do,” says Sidney Shapiro, a 26-year-old student in Israel, who posted his film on Google Video last month.
The popularity of the videos – Mentos says it has found some 800 online – is producing a gusher of free publicity for the candymaker, a unit of Italian confectioner Perfetti Van Melle.
“We are tickled pink by it,” says Pete Healy, vice president of marketing for the company’s U.S. division. The company spends less than $20 million on U.S. advertising annually. He estimates the value of online buzz to be “over $10 million.”
The company is considering striking a marketing deal with the two men responsible for one of the more elaborate videos – using 101 two-liter bottles of Diet Coke and 523 Mentos to create a dancing fountain like the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas – posted on the website EepyBird.com, Healy says.
Coca-Cola Co. is much more blasé. “It’s an entertaining phenomenon,” said Coke spokeswoman Susan McDermott. “We would hope people want to drink (Diet Coke) more than try experiments with it.”
Coke could use some extra buzz right now. Sales volume of Diet Coke in the U.S. was essentially flat last year, as consumers switch from diet sodas to bottled water and other noncarbonated drinks. But McDermott says that the “craziness with Mentos … doesn’t fit with the brand personality” of Diet Coke.
Despite Coke’s “Who needs it?” attitude, the phenomenon shows how brands can take on a life of their own, particularly on the Internet. Mentos’ Healy points out that Coke-Mentos experiments have been around for years, but they have been given a new jolt by the newfound fascination among young people to create video content and share it online.
