When I was in college, I decided that I needed to travel the world. This was made incredibly difficult by the fact that I was a college student and working only 10-15 hours a week at a minimum wage job. Exercising bitter frugality, including 4 months living off of a Costco box of oatmeal (yes, it’s true), I scraped together enough money to buy a plane ticket to Europe. As the end of my travels neared, I wound up stranded for a week in Berlin.
Here is a picture from that forced yet enjoyable week in Berlin, featuring myself and some newly met friends standing in front of the Alexanderplatz U-Bahn (rapid transit) station.
If you had gone inside the Alexanderplatz station last month, you would have found this:
Volkswagen, known for its ingenious advertising including the “Think Small” campaign, installed a “Fast Lane” slide in the Alexanderplatz subway station. This clever marketing stunt, “dedicated to everyone who enjoys speeding life up a little,” is a follow-up to Volkswagen’s “Fun Theory” initiative, which promoted good behavior by making it enjoyable. In Sweden, this meant transforming a set of subway stairs into a giant piano keyboard. A reported 66 percent more people than normal took the stairs over the adjacent escalator that day, and the stunt generated international publicity.
These “outside-the-box” campaigns are proving far more adept at drawing positive attention to brands than traditional marketing methods. While Volkswagen could have purchased a commercial instead of a giant slide, it’s unlikely that another traditional ad would generate the same level of buzz as the “Fun Theory” stunts: the video of the Alexanderplatz U-Bahn slide has more than 1.3 million views since posting on June 11, and the Piano Stairs video has more than 12 million. Compare that to Volkswagen’s other commercials on YouTube, only one of which has more than 1 million views. Taking something as mundane as a subway station and turning it into a living Willy Wonka playground is getting people to talk about the brand, not to mention putting a smile on commuters’ (and YouTube watchers’) faces.
