Say goodbye to the parrot and eyepatch – treasure hunting has taken on a whole new look.

With the invention of the Global Positioning System unit, geocaching has become a newfound hobby for modern-day treasure hunters.

The concept of geocaching is simple. You only need a GPS unit and a few coordinates to find a lockbox of trinkets left by other modern-day pirates.

In order to keep the valuables, you must leave something of equal value in its place. And if everything works out right, the cycle never ends.

But a team of students in an advertising campaigns class is using geocaching for more than just a hobby.

The students are using geocaching to promote Coca-Cola for their campaign in the National Student Advertising Competition, a student contest run by the American Advertising Federation.

“Coke connects people,” said Leah Kapa, a senior psychology and advertising major from Cedartown. “Geocaching is a way to promote that idea.”

The idea being presented by Kapa’s team starts with online coordinates for 2,500 different caches on the Coca-Cola Web site. After putting in only their zipcode, a cache-seeker can find GPS coordinates for the closest cache to their position.

Then, the treasure hunter can drive to the correct location and look for the cache.

Once they find the cache, the treasure hunter would discover a lockbox full of Coca-Cola merchandise.

Colleen McLaughlin, a senior advertising major from New Orleans and a team member of Kapa’s, said the campaign is not limited to geocaching.

“We put our own spin on it,” McLaughlin said. The team’s idea includes a page on the Coca-Cola Web site called the Xtreme Xchange, on which people can share their geocaching experiences by writing on a discussion board or competing in a funniest video contest.

The promotional idea has been a semester-long project that is coming to an end today at 6 p.m. in room 102 of the Student Learing Center, with a presentation in front of Grady College professors and the other teams in the class.

The winning team will be named Friday and will move on to the regional level to be judged by Coca-Cola and AAF representatives.