5 showstopping ambient advertising examples

1. Netflix’s After Life park benches

As part of the launch for the final season of After Life, Netflix teamed up with CALM, a suicide prevention charity, for a mental health campaign. Their target was something so everyday, you’d only notice when you sat on it - the park bench.

A park bench in a graveyard is one of the key scenes in After Life, so Netflix installed 25 benches across the UK from Cardiff’s Victoria Park to Nottingham’s Arboretum. Each bench was inscribed with the message ‘Hope is Everything’ and had a QR code linking to CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) and their resources.

The purpose of the After Life park benches campaign was to raise awareness around the bigger topic of mental health and grief, creating spaces for people to sit and talk. For Netflix, the ambient advertising campaign also brought press coverage and a way for After Life fans to connect with the show by sharing their local benches.

2. The Coca-Cola happiness vending machine

Imagine a Coca-Cola vending machine on a college campus. Nothing special, right? Coca-Cola turned expectations on their head with their viral ‘Happiness Machine’, a vending machine that could dispense anything from pizza to flowers and, of course, extra bottles of Coca-Cola.

In their viral ambient campaign, Coca-Cola secretly filmed the joyful reactions of students as they share their bottles and a hand reaches out delivering sunflowers and a balloon dog.

With the purpose of delivering a little happiness and adding a little magic to their ubiquitous machines, Coca-Cola has since placed happiness machines in countries such as Singapore and Belgium. A huge success, the campaign went viral online and received lots of press coverage, strengthening Coca-Cola’s brand perception and association with happy moments.

Here's another example of a Coca-Cola happiness vending machine in Sweden:

3. McDonald’s sundial billboard​

As the sun rises on the McDonald’s sundial billboard, the shadow of an ‘M’ is cast over the fast-food chain’s breakfast menu from 6am coffee to an 11am bagel. This clever billboard in Chicago was the result of plentiful location research and collaboration with an engineer.

When this campaign launched in 2011, it helped to raise awareness around McDonald’s new breakfast offering, reinforcing new temptations for each hour of the morning. This campaign gained lots of buzz on social media and was shared as an example of ingenuity in advertising, helping to position the McDonald’s brand as creative and fun.

If you’d like to see your brand on billboards, bikes, or even suspended from stadiums, we can help you make a splash strategically with our out of home advertising services.

Here's a video of the billboard in action:

4. The Volkswagen piano stairs campaign

Could Volkswagen persuade you to drop the escalator for the stairs? In 2009, Volkswagen did just that, transforming the stairs of a subway into a tinkling set of piano keys. As a result, 66% more people chose the stairs over the escalator.

However, Volkswagen’s real interest wasn’t in stairs. The car manufacturer was investing in green technologies for their vehicles, but the market was still doubtful about the performance of energy-efficient and electric cars.

The Volkswagen piano stairs campaign was part of a wider strategy to show that the greener option could be unexpectedly fun. Really, the stairs were an analogy showing how people could choose more eco-friendly cars without compromising on their driving experience.

As part of the campaign, Volkswagen shared three videos showing their live experiments and positioning themselves as a creative brand that could positively change people’s behaviour. The videos went viral and showcased Volkswagen’s green innovation in a way ordinary people could understand.

The video below shows Volkswagen's piano stairs:

5. IKEA’s Bus Shelters

IKEA isn’t new to transforming bus shelters. For years, the Swedish furnishing retailer has used bus shelters as ambient advertising to raise awareness of anything from catalogues to, in this case, tidy bedrooms.

In 2025, Milan is IKEA’s next, well, stop. IKEA is turning a long bus shelter into two contrasting bedrooms. The first will be cluttered, with the slogan, ‘In disorder, sleep is lost.’ The second, will showcase IKEA’s storage solutions with the message, ‘A tidy room brings peaceful sleep.’

Whether it’s turning a bus shelter into a bedroom, or multiple iterations of cosy living rooms, IKEA’s bus stops are a combination of out of home and ambient advertising, infusing uncomfortable everyday spaces with the cosy hygge IKEA is known for.

IKEA’s bus stops allow commuters to experience the brand in their city, while delivering a promotional message and encouraging social media shares. Here are nine more benefits to bus shelter advertising.

Below is an example of an IKEA bus shelter in Mexico, photo taken by Arturo de Alburnoz.