Dos Equis Puts Cold to Work with Cooler Promotion

Retail beer customers may get a chilling message next time they open their local store’s cooler door. Heineken USA brand Dos Equis has launched a promotional campaign that will use novel heat-reacting technology to print a marketing message every time a cooler door is exposed to warmth.

Produced by platform Visual Ice, the campaign uses an invisible coating inside the cooler door. That coating reacts when exposed to the heat of opening the refrigerator door and forms a frosty image that lingers until the sensors chill back down—in most cases, about two minutes. The images do not feature color but appear to be written in frost.

The Dos Equis campaign will show chilling customers a large “XX” from Visual Ice and suggest that they “Make it a legendary party.” The point-of-purchase messages will appear in about 1,500 retail outlets nationwide.

According to Visual Ice, the frosty promotion technology takes advantage of the fact that 70% of purchase decisions are made in the store and 68% on impulse, with only 5% of customers expressing product loyalty.

In April, Dos Equis launched an integrated ad campaign of online and offline messaging to find a new personal assistant for its TV spokesman, the so-called “Most Interesting Man in the World.”

Last fall, Visual Ice supermarket displays served messages in a campaign by CBS Networks to promote its romantic vampire show “Moonlight.” The show has not been renewed for the coming season.

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