Coca-Cola Hello Happiness

Crass marketing campaign or genuinely nice gesture? That’s the debate surrounding a Coca-Cola video created in Dubai.

VIDEO LINK HERE

The video called ‘Hello Happiness’ depicts South Asian construction laborers using the tops of Coca-Cola bottles as currency in a branded phone booth that allows them to make a three-minute international call to loved ones in India, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Coke is paying for the phone call, branding the booth, and the laborers are paying for the Coke bottles.

Published on Wednesday, the video has already caused a stir on social media.

The ad says that laborers have an average income of $6 per day and have to pay up to $0.91 per minute to call home. A bottle of Coke costs $0.54 in Dubai currently, so the laborers are paying $0.54 for a three-minute call rather than $2.70.

Some Twitter users have lambasted Coke for using the poor working conditions and meagre pay of laborers in the Arabian/Persian Gulf, as a tool to increase brand awareness, and have criticised the company for effectively forcing labourers to pay to buy a Coke to use the phone.

“This isn’t charitable in any way. Just plain marketing,” one person wrote. “It would have been charitable if they made them call for free or used any bottle cap.”

Despite the protestations, the majority of comments so far about the are supportive of the initiative.