WET Design (http://www.wetdesign.com), a company based in Universal City, California, created the fountain. The company's founder and CEO, Mark Fuller, led the team from Disney Imagineering that created Epcot Center's Leapfrog fountain, in which streams of water play a mischievous game of tag. The Coca-Cola fountain uses the same technology: A patented device about 12 inches in diameter and 30 inches long contains a series of flow-straightening filters. The aggregate cost: about $1.25 million.
At the center of the floor is the emotional heart of the whole attraction -- a storytelling video theater created by Dana Atchley. Atchley specializes in using new technologies to help companies tell emotionally engaging stories. The theater doors automatically close, and a guest-relations representative welcomes the audience and then uses a touch-screen monitor to select one of seven "show sets." Each set starts with a fun, upbeat real-life story. In one story, participants at a Coca-Cola -- memorabilia auction are asked, "Do you do it for love or for money?" The answer, of course, is that people do it for love. At the end of the story, two people who met at an auction get married at the World of Coca-Cola Atlanta.
Next comes a brief, animated game show, during which the audience is scored on its knowledge of famous Coca-Cola personalities. That's followed first by a series of "fun facts" and then by an emotionally resonant piece. In one segment, an Indiana man tells of carrying a Coca-Cola bottle with him through World War II. The man returned home from the war and placed the bottle on his fireplace mantel. Decades later, his house burned down -- but the Coca-Cola bottle remained intact.
The show closes with a brand story (one piece traces the history of the secret formula), and at the end of the show, the host invites audience members to type in their own Coca-Cola stories using computers that are located just outside the theater. In the first three weeks that the attraction was open, 1,800 people recorded their stories.
"Any presentation has to have a dramatic arc," Atchley explains. "We wanted to create the sense of a journey, with a call to action at the end. If I give a presentation that's intended to sell, I tell a story whose call to action is 'Purchase my product.' In Las Vegas, our goal is to get people emotionally involved in the brand -- so much so that they're ready to spend big bucks in the retail store downstairs."
Jill Rosenfeld (jrosenfeld@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer. Visit Coca-Cola on the Web (www.cocacola.com).
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