Everyone has stared at a full refrigerator trying to figure out what to make to eat when there are many options in plain sight. We have no idea what to cook or can’t bother to cook and as a result, the average American household wastes $1600 dollars of food per year.
We wondered, if people don’t see the value of what’s in the fridge, what else could they miss?
With that insight, Wunderman Thompson NY’s creative team “filled” a fridge stocked with commonly wasted food items, along with Hellmann’s, a versatile ingredient for many simple recipes. Tucked among the fridge contents: a ticket with a chance to win $1600. The work is displayed across New York on LinkNYC kiosks, which are perfect replicas of an open fridge, complete with their 55-inch screen size and shape and light shining on its offerings. It was the perfect place to hide a prize at eye level, in plain sight.
From April 18-25, commuters passed by the fridges, in dozens of locations throughout the city, missing an important clue. Our experiment worked, even as a gigantic billboard in Times Square flashed the open fridge for all observers to see. Consumers glued to smartphones and computer screens didn’t spot the clue in the social campaign launching a few days before leading to the big reveal. In each image of the open fridge, a ticket, with a chance to win a $1600 cash prize (the amount we waste on food each year) went unnoticed.
Of all the potential people that could have won the cash prize, not one person took a closer look into the fridge highlighting how we’re all guilty of leaving money on the table by not taking a closer look at what’s in our fridge.
A week after the “experiment”, commuters and social visitors were greeted with the reveal.
