Tag: Ambient Advertising

Fanta: Lift & Laugh

A school elevator that refuses to stay boring

Ogilvy Brazil sought to reinforce Fanta’s brand image of “joy” in the USA. So they came up with an elevator prank called “Lift & Laugh”.

An elevator in a school in Atlanta was chosen to arouse students curiosity and laughter. In the elevator they installed a device that responded to the movements and comments from the students.

The mechanic: a responsive space that reacts back

This works by turning a routine moment. waiting for an elevator ride. into an interaction loop. The environment listens, then answers in real time, so the people inside start experimenting to see what triggers the next reaction.

An ambient ad is a brand experience placed in an everyday setting, where the setting itself becomes the medium and the message is delivered through participation.

In youth and soft drink marketing, “joy” only sticks when it is felt in-the-moment, not just claimed in a tagline.

Why the prank lands with students

It creates instant permission to play. The elevator is a confined stage, the reactions are immediate, and the group dynamic amplifies everything. If one person laughs, everyone joins, and the experience escalates without needing instruction.

Because the trigger is the students own movement and comments, the fun feels earned. That makes the memory durable, and more likely to be retold outside the elevator.

The business intent: make joy a repeatable brand behavior

This is not just a one-off gag. It is a proof point for a positioning idea. Fanta turns dull places into fun places. If the experience is good enough, the brand gets earned attention plus social retell value without needing to push product features.

In the end many students did not want to get off the elevator and asked for a repeat trip.

What to steal if you want an experience people replay

  • Make the interaction discoverable. People should learn the rules by trying, not by reading.
  • Reward experimentation fast. Short feedback loops create momentum.
  • Design for groups, not individuals. Laughter spreads socially. Build for that amplification.
  • Anchor the behavior to your brand. The “why” should map cleanly to what you stand for.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Fanta’s Lift & Laugh?

It is an elevator prank experience where the elevator reacts to students’ movements and comments, turning a normal ride into a playful, responsive brand moment for Fanta.

How does the elevator prank create engagement?

It uses immediate cause and effect. People try something, the elevator responds, and the group starts experimenting together to trigger more reactions.

What should brands learn from this format?

If you want “fun” as a brand attribute, build it into a situation people already live. Then make participation the delivery mechanism, not a message about participation.

Bredaphoto International Photo Festival

Bredaphoto is an annual photo festival that is held between September 16 until October 24 in the Netherlands. During this period Breda lives and breaths photography. 50 photographers from all over the world come to show their vision on the present world that is up side down.

In order to encourage more people from the surrounding areas to visit their festival in 2010, they used the end of the dutch holiday season to infiltrate into the comfort zone of their target group. They successfully tied up with 12 regional photographic shops who while printing all the holiday photos also provided a photo from the Breda Photo festival. The contrast between the holiday photos and the photos shown by Breda were so stark that it was able to draw a whopping 55,000 visitors…a record for the festival.

Europcar: Crush Hour

A crushed-car prank with a very public punchline

Ogilvy Paris was entrusted to drive acquisition for Europcar’s Auto Liberte, a service that aims to have you rent cars instead of buying them. So, they devised a wicked prank in which they towed away unsuspecting people’s cars, while replacing them with crushed cube cars, and a number to call for help.

The phone number given was of a local radio station that was broadcasting live to everyone in Paris.

The mechanism: make “car ownership pain” impossible to ignore

The stunt works because it hijacks a real ownership fear. Your car is gone. Then it escalates the feeling by replacing it with a cube that looks final, and a phone number that turns the private panic into a public moment.

Instead of resolving the situation quietly, the call routes into live radio, so the story instantly becomes shareable content and social proof.

In urban mobility markets, moving people from ownership to access depends on reframing convenience, cost, and hassle in a way that feels personal and immediate.

Why it lands: it turns a product claim into lived experience

Auto Liberté is an alternative to owning a car. The prank makes “owning a car is a headache” feel visceral in seconds, without needing a brochure explanation.

It also flips the usual persuasion order. Emotion first. Rationalization second. Once the audience feels the pain, the rental alternative feels like relief.

The business intent behind the spectacle

This is acquisition marketing dressed as entertainment. The goal is to create talk value at street level, then convert that attention into brand consideration for a service that competes with a deeply ingrained habit.

By integrating radio, the campaign extends the moment beyond the people on the sidewalk to a city-scale audience, while keeping the message anchored to everyday reality.

What to steal for your next “behavior change” campaign

  • Attack the habit, not the competitor. The target here is ownership friction, not another rental brand.
  • Build a simple reveal. Missing car. Crushed cube. One number to call. Instant comprehension.
  • Make the amplification native. Live radio turns reactions into content without needing a separate distribution plan.
  • Design the story to travel in one sentence. “They crushed my car and put me live on radio” spreads fast.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Europcar’s “Crush Hour” campaign?

It is a street prank created for Auto Liberté where parked cars were towed away and replaced with crushed cube cars, pushing owners to call a number that connected them to live radio.

How does the live radio element change the impact?

It turns a private moment into a public story. The call becomes instant broadcast content, which amplifies reach and makes the message feel socially real, not just advertised.

What is the campaign trying to persuade people to do?

It positions Auto Liberté as an alternative to car ownership, using a high-drama metaphor to make ownership feel stressful and renting feel like the smarter default.