Diet Coke, Mentos and Lawyers

January 21, 2007 on 8:51 pm | In Famous Inventors |

In a Special Report for BusinessWeek.com, Rachel King describes how a lawyer and a professional juggler became a sensation—and led one of the world’s biggest companies to embrace viral marketing.

One November afternoon in 2005, lawyer Stephen Voltz traveled to the tiny town of Buckfield, Me., to watch his friend, professional juggler Fritz Grobe, perform in a sketch comedy show. While Grobe prepared for that evening’s show at the Oddfellow Theater, Voltz passed the time by dropping Mentos candy into Diet Coke bottles. Just as another friend had predicted, the bottle exploded, releasing a fountain of soda. After doing this experiment several times, both Voltz and Grobe became so intrigued by the effect that they decided to record a video for a segment on that evening’s show. "We kept thinking, are we crazy or is this cool?" says Voltz.

Click here to watch the latest Diet Coke and Mentos video.

Voltz, ever the lawyer, isn’t releasing any financial details of the deal. "I haven’t felt the impact financially," he says. But, he says, he has felt a huge difference in terms of notoriety. For the future, both Voltz and Grobe are brimming with ideas, and they’re eager to continue working with Coke, Mentos, and other companies to create quality online video content. As for Coke, the company says it will continue to spend more ad dollars online. "We really do take it in a serious way and we are absolutely committed to reinventing marketing," says Kopp. "Our percent of ad spending is following consumers online." Voltz says he’s amazed at the potential that viral online videos have created, not only for himself but for his many friends who do sketch comedy. "You don’t have to wait for a Hollywood studio," he says. "Now, if you have work that resonates with others, it’s a lot easier to get to your audience."

Some lawyers are amazing. Others just have amazing clients.

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