• Fast Company, Wednesday, February 15, 2012 10:27 AM

Mercedes-Benz has found a new way of showing off all the space inside its vans: by allowing consumers to open the vehicle’s doors in its ads using their car keys.

Created by German agency Lukas Lindemann Rosinski, the interactive advertising event took place in a Berlin underground station. The 12 interactive ads around the terminal recognized and responded to the signal sent out by remote keys. Passersby who brandished their own car keys upon encountering these digital display areas found that they actually unlocked the doors to the van inside the ad. The vans were filled (virtually) with something demonstrating storage capacity.

After the van’s side door opened, a group of female bodybuilders might walk out, or a Transformer, or some sumo wrestlers. People who encountered the ad revealing an empty Viano with a chauffeur out front were escorted to a Vianos outside for a test ride to whatever destination they’d been hoping to reach by train.

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