Heineken’s Walk-In Fridge

Objective: Play off a popular ad effort to extend the now-familiar, easily identifiable campaign into other marketing events.
Payoff: Millions of YouTube views.

Beer-maker Heineken released an online video in 2009 called “Walk-In Fridge” that featured a group of girlfriends jumping up and down and shrieking when they see the hostess’ new walk-in closet. In another room, the men have their own moment when they see the host’s walk-in refrigerator lined with shelves of ice-cold Heineken.

Heineken then grew the viral tail of the idea even longer. In 2010, it built a walk-in fridge that it took to beer festivals, allowing groups to parody the ad and upload their efforts to YouTube. The company also created a longer video showing guys installing a walk-in fridge in an apartment, with the box extending outside the building with no visible means of support.

This is a great example of taking one winning idea and finding ways to keep it fresh over time. And costs are minimal when much of the effort is produced by customers who are shooting and uploading their own videos.

Objective: Promote the 2010 fall and holiday season apparel lines and gain attention from the fashion set during New York’s Fashion Week.
Payoff: 3,000 people on street level; 12.6 million Google hits from the event.

Seeking to turn heads at New York’s fall Fashion Week, Target rented street-facing rooms in Manhattan’s Standard Hotel in the fashionable Meatpacking District. At sundown, the lights went up. Throwing open the rooms’ white curtains, 66 dancers dressed in day-glo suits wriggled and writhed to a score by DJ Sam Spiegel while the a light show cycled through a spectrum of color combos — a Close Encounters-like light show reinterpreted for Gen-Y.

Target installed bleachers on Little West 12th Street to provide seating for some of the 3,000 to 5,000 onlookers, invited celebrities to jazz things up, and Web-casted, video-recorded, and photographed the event for maximum media and social media exposure.

MINI’s challenge to Porsche:

Objective: Generate customer engagement.
Payoff: YouTube views in the six figures; MINI talked about in the same breath as Porsche.
Unforeseen payoff for a competitor: Carmaker Hyundai jumped in on the game.

MINI has never been big on TV advertising. The British automaker, owned by BMW, broke into the U.S. market a decade ago entirely via guerilla marketing. In Spring 2010, MINI chief James McDowell appeared in a YouTube video challenging Porsche North America to a race (Porsche turned MINI down).

The video, which appeared on YouTube as well as Mini’s website, was shot with Flip cameras, then circulated to leading auto industry bloggers, who wrote about the stunt.

And, in the wide-open world of guerrilla marketing, a third auto company, Hyundai, decided to join in the good-natured one-upmanship, creating its own video challenging MINI to a race. Hyundai’s ballsy effort earned more than 50,000 views and engaged the attention of the auto industry media, some of whom saw Hyundai as the cleverest marketer of the three.

Objective: Bring attention to the issue of global warming.
Payoff: Coverage in hundreds of blogs and news media outlets.

Small businesses can take a lesson from nonprofits and advocacy groups, which often make up for small marketing budgets by creating offbeat campaigns.

The city of Vancouver got a dose of global warming reality when Offsetters, a Canadian organization that advises companies and individuals on how to offset carbon emissions, hung life rafts off the sides of buildings, set up manned lifeguard stands in city parks with “Lifeguard On Duty” signs, and strapped life jackets under park benches with advisory signs for passersby.

The point: That global warming, unchecked, will flood coastal cities. The execution didn’t cost much, but created high shock value that got the attention of local and national media. And the idea was completely tied into the mission of the organization.