How This Interactive Subway Ad Got Everybody Yawning, and Wanting Coffee

via Ad Week

This interactive outdoor campaign by Lew'Lara\TBWA is a real yawner—which is exactly what the Brazilian agency intended.

The shop set up a digital panel equipped with a motion sensor at São Paulo's busy Fradique Coutinho subway station at morning rush hour. When commuters approached the sign, the face on the panel would yawn. Naturally, many of the commuters themselves also began yawning—yawning being notoriously contagious, after all—at which point the screen made a product pitch.

In case the sign wasn't enough of a wake-up call, perky glamor gals arrive on the scene with some product samples. (Watch the clip to savor the big reveal.)

Watch "The Contagious Billboard" Here

That last bit—the glamor gals—might strike some viewers as gratuitous, but otherwise this a prime example of what prankverising has been morphing into over the past few years.

Shocking stunts have by and large been replaced by a fusion of technology and street theater as brands create positive real-world experiences designed for subsequent media consumption. Of late, they've run the gamut from fun to moving to doggone adorable.

As long as such campaigns remain clever and inclusive, it will be along time before the public tires of this approach.