There’s something about a locked door in plain sight that just annoys the heck out of people. The mystery, the audacity, and the stubborn challenge it issues just begs you to take a crack at it. Maybe that’s why I found this recent video from Molson Canadian so interesting:
The beer company dropped bright red fridges stocked full of Molson Canadian beer in several large European cities. The beer was free, but there’s a catch: The fridge will only open once a Canadian passport is scanned. Security issues aside (would you scan your passport in a random vending machine in a public place?) I thought it was a cool promotion that brought a lot of different people together, if only for the time it takes to down a brew.
Molson is taking a page out of Coca-Cola’s book on this one. The soft drink company has been doing public installation and “feel good” entertainment stunts for years. If the edited video is to be believed, this type of stunt builds a social atmosphere between complete strangers, and generates an interest in the brand. The most interesting part to me, however, is that Canadian isn’t even sold very widely in the countries in which the fridges were placed. So why pull a stunt in a country that isn’t even a target market?
This brings me to analyzing the ad again. Watching it as an ad rather than a story, I realized that what Molson is doing is more along the lines of building homesickness in a customer that is already at home. The video is more about showing the happiness in the Canadian travelers when they get a little piece of home after being so far away for so long.
I believe Molson did a very good job with this promotion. Not only is it entertaining to watch and achieves the desired effect, but it fits right in with Molson’s current marketing strategy of tying itself to Canada itself. Installed “observational” ads are becoming more popular, and the Molson traveling beer fridge is a prime example.