Glass and coaster are fixed with repelling magnets
By Toni Fitzgerald Jul 28, 2009
Imagine this: You are sitting at the bar drinking beer with your buddies when you go to put your glass down on the coaster.
Only you can’t.
When you set the glass down, the coaster moves away.
You try again. Again, the coaster moves away, as if repelled by your glass.
Have you had one beer too many?
No, what's taking place is quite real, and there's a message to it, as you realize when you look more closely at the glass and the coaster.
"Drinking and driving don’t mix” is in big letters on the glass. On the coaster is an image of a car.
Aha, the light goes off. The glass and the coaster are equipped with repelling magnets. It's a clever alternative media campaign by Foster’s beer and parent company SABMiller that ran in India earlier this year.
What made it so clever was that it delivered the message at the point of consumption. That's better than a billboard on the highway, which comes too late, after the beer has been guzzled down.
The campaign also worked because it made the point using a sight gag, so it wasn't intrusive or preachy. It was fun, and it got people talking, which is precisely what you want when it comes to drinking and driving.
The campaign was created by Ogilvy & Mather, Bangalore, with the aim of targeting young adult male professionals with a campaign that would get them buzzing.
“As the target males don’t like to be preached at and believe in discovering their paths, the message needed to be communicated in an innovative way without being preachy, educating them about the hazards of drinking and driving, while eliciting a smile in the entire process,” explains Ogilvy’s P. Jayashree Marshall, who worked on the campaign.
The special glasses and coasters cost $14 per set to produce and were distributed to more than 40 pubs and night clubs across Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta.
The coasters were black with different-colored sports cars on them, and each had a magnet superglued to the back. The mugs had the Foster’s logo on them, along with the "Drinking and driving don’t mix” message, and a groove in the base for the opposing magnets.
The agency thought up the campaign almost by accident. Ogilvy had already ruled out several more traditional out-of-home media, such as posters.
“We have magnets on our soft boards and one of our people came up with the idea while playing with these magnets. The rest just fell in place,” Marshall says.
It has been effective, too. Ogilvy says that compared to 2007 and 2008, the first three months of 2009 saw a sharp decline in drunken driving accidents, and bar patrons hailing cabs after a drinking session has increased by 70 percent.
“Both consumers and establishments felt that this was by far the most funny but effective way of communicating the ills of drinking and driving,” Marshall says.
