Drinks giant Coca-Cola is to partner with mobile marketing software and coupon clearing platform Hashting to help connect, engage, and influence shoppers mid-shop.

Joanna Oakley, Coca-Cola’s Senior Environment Lead - Grocery said of their brief, “we want to make shoppers think about what they're buying and potentially make them break their old habits and pick up new Coca-Cola products.” 

Hashting will now have the chance to scale their business with Coca-Cola through a £20k pilot pitch.

Hashting’s solution is based on their platform which serves consumer journeys based on Whatsapp and SMS messages and is focused on two principles. Principle number one is that the mobile is the easiest and most direct way to reach consumers. Principle number two, is once you're on the mobile, the best place to engage with consumers is via instant messaging. 

“We live and breath where the customer already spends most of their time”, said James Elsworth, General Manager, UK & Nordics for Hashting in the winning pitch.

“We serve a three step journey that's focused on just two things: conversion and engagement. So every consumer journey that we have consists of three steps. Connect to the consumer, via any marketing touch point, and we mean absolutely anything. It can be online, it can be offline, so that within a single click or a scan, we jump into their preferred messaging platform.”

Oakley loved the simple yet great, ‘connect, convert, and continue’ solution. She added that they were also attracted to Hastings because  “of the learnings you get on all the different media touchpoints combined with the practicality of WhatsApp and SMS.”

Hosted by Coca-Cola’s Joanna Oakley and Co:Cubed Founder and CEO Jeremy Basset, Hashting pitched against a strong line-up of start-ups. Watch their winning pitch here.

You can watch all the MAD//Fest London action including the PITCH//IT sessions from Boots, McCormick, EON, M&S, and AB InBev on our YouTube channel. Just select the ‘House of Innovation’ playlist for each day to catch all of the pitches.