On August 17, following the hottest July on record for New York City, with heat records being set in a number of U.S. cities, air-conditioner brand Midea teamed up with creative agency Pereira O’Dell (part of the Serviceplan Group) to treat New Yorkers to a 90-minute film featuring the Midea U, at Manhattan cinema Village East by Angelika.
New Yorkers were able to escape the heat of the city to the air conditioned cinema, to attend the premiere of 90 minutes of air conditioning–a feature length film about an air conditioner cooling a New York City apartment–accompanied by free popcorn and soda.
Pereira O’Dell Entertainment conceived the Warholian 90-minute film starring the air conditioning unit the Midea U, seizing the moment of the record-breaking NYC summer heatwave. Brody Bernheisel directed via Barrelhouse Productions.
Attendees of the premiere were offered a discount on a Midea AC unit, so that they could bring the air-conditioned movie-watching experience home. The draw is the chill, not the content. The film may make you fall asleep. It simply shows a Midea AC unit cooling an apartment with a person occasionally coming into frame.
Sixty (this ScreenWork entry) and 15 second clips of 90 Minutes of Air Conditioning will run on social channels and give more people the chance to “watch” the film, and laugh at the insider joke riffing on the NYers' habit of going to an air conditioned cinema to escape summer heatwaves.
Rather than tell people to turn off the phones, as is usual at the cinema, the film encouraged people to keep theirs on, chat during the movie, watch something on their phones and enjoy being cool.
Robert Lambrechts, chief creative officer, Pereira O’Dell, described the 90 minutes of a single product shot as “likely the longest product placement in the history of advertising.”
Pereira said the idea for the marketing video came about three weeks ago, when he and other New Yorkers were enduring brutal temperatures in the city. He said, “Viewers can just get dry and get their body temperature to a reasonable place, check their emails, make a couple phone calls if they want. It’s the same shot for 90 minutes. Nothing else happens.”
The Midea brand, which is heaquartered in China, is using this campaign to break into the U.S. market. The film showcases its Midea U model, which is designed to have a window seal close over it, rather than having one that requires people to seal up with sides with duct tape or foam, making New York the best place to launch the brand and product, according to Lambrechts. The campaign will feature OOH as well and will hopefully expand outside of New York in the future.
