One billboard, an available placement next to it and a word that belongs just as naturally to the worlds of beer and ice cream were enough to spark one of the more interesting OOH exchanges of the summer in Toronto.
Häagen-Dazs, through its Let’s Grab a Pint campaign developed with agency Courage, used the phrase “grab a pint” as a play on words between a pint of ice cream and a pint of beer.
The brand secured an available billboard directly next to Häagen-Dazs’ and responded with the question: “Are you asking us out?” Less than seven days passed between finding the available placement and the campaign going live, and the two sides had not coordinated the activation beforehand.
Stella’s response was therefore not a continuation of a pre-planned joint campaign, but a reaction to what was already present in the city. The Stella Artois and draftLine teams spotted the Häagen-Dazs campaign in mid-August, when it appeared at high-profile locations across downtown Toronto, including streetcars. The depiction of ice cream in pint glasses and the message itself created enough room for the same expression to be translated into the language of a beer brand, while the available placement next to the original billboard allowed the response to work as a direct reply.
Natalie Lucas, Head of Premium and Above Core at Stella Artois, described the response as a playful acknowledgement of the brands’ “shared brand language”, adding that having a pint with friends is a social ritual that Stella Artois naturally belongs to.
The conversation could have ended there, but Häagen-Dazs responded a few days later. Instead of another billboard, a mobile OOH truck arrived at the location carrying the message: “Depends. You into spooning?”
Tracey Cooke, Chief Marketing Officer for Häagen-Dazs at Nestlé Canada, said that the beer brand entering the conversation created an opportunity to continue the original play on words and once again draw attention to Häagen-Dazs’ “pint”.
For Courage, the speed of the response was an important part of the idea. After Stella’s reply attracted attention within the advertising community, the team wanted to seize the moment and extend the exchange, rather than allow the original campaign to remain merely the starting point for another brand’s comment.
The sequence of “Let’s grab a pint”, “Are you asking us out?”, “Depends. You into spooning?” and “Only if you’re into six packs” thus turned two separate OOH ads into a public conversation between brands.
For Joel Holtby, founder and Global Co-Chief Creative Officer at Courage, this is precisely the value of good outdoor work: the idea does not remain confined to a single billboard, but gives passersby the sense that they are following a conversation unfolding in front of them.
In this case, that conversation did not emerge from a joint brief or a pre-arranged collaboration. It started simply because one brand spotted a good opportunity next to another brand’s billboard and decided to respond.
