Major corporate branding. Cryptic cookies. Layers upon layers of authentication. Coca-Cola’s latest attempt to reach tweens through location-based playlist creation and discovery has some major hurdles to overcome before mass adoption. Because Coke is available in 207 countries and consumed 1.8 billion times per day, it is the antithesis of a hip brand with which in-the-know kids want to associate. Yet Coke invested $10 million in streaming service Spotify and partnered with it to create Placelists — a mashup of Facebook “Places” and Spotify playlists. With 24 million monthly active users, 6 million paid subscribers in 28 countries and a cool application programming interface, Spotify should be the best place to try and launch such an idea. But Placelists had exactly zero reviews in the Apple App Store as of Jan. 3, two days after its U.S. debut. There are multiple reasons why the Placelists app needs refining before it actually reaches the masses. When launching Placelists on a Mac, the app boots inside the Spotify client-and things already start to go awry. Even when signed into the Spotify client as a premium member, Coke needs the user’s Facebook email and password, which he or she then has to dig out. If users have activated two-step authentication, they’ll need a security code texted to a phone. It’s another hassle for which the prospective listener is rewarded with buckets of Coke branding, and a note that the company wants to sync with the user’s Facebook public profile, friend list, status updates, events, current city and music activity. Then Coke puts a few cookies on the browsers, with a Europe-mandated disclosure spelling out how the corporation is tracking its users. Mobile authentication is even more frustrating. The heart of the app is a world map drenched in Coke red, with little icons sitting on top of locations; most of the globe is barren. Click on the featured location of Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, and one inexplicably gets a Pixies song. Coke urges users to invite friends to the app, add playlists of their favorite locations and vote on what would play in others. There are interesting premises here, but obviously, some tinkering must be done.
