Many of us will remember, and love, the famous piano scene from the movie 'Big' and probably tried to re-inact it whenever we were in a toy store. Volkswagen gave the Swedish public the opportunity. They took this fun and enjoyable scene and brought it into our world with The Piano Staircase.

The mission was to see whether they could get more people to choose the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? The answer was a staircase in a subway station that was transformed into a gigantic piano. Of course it worked! '66% more people than normal took the stairs over the escalator' and also had fun doing so.*
I love this activation. You can see from the video that it gained a snowball effect. Once one person had realised the fun that could be had, others didn't hesitate to get involved. It could also be easily  replicated across other locations, but I personally think that it would need to be a random placement for a short period of time to be able to get the full shock and intrigue appeal. 
This activation is nearly 8 years old, yet you could easily see it in a location now. This shows the genius behind it and how timeless creating something that is fun and engaging can be. 

The only issue, I feel, is that it doesn't necessarily link back to Volkswagen Cars. Therefore there wouldn't have been an initial consumer-brand engagement created during the use of the staircase. 
However there was a reasoning behind this fun set-up. 'The activation was developed by The Fun Theory, an initiative from Volkswagens BlueMotion Technologies – a series of cars and innovations that help reduce environmental impact without compromising on performance or the joy of driving.'* 
If this was replicated in the future it would definitely be important to focus on creating some sort of brand connection to allow consumers to be able to interact and post through social media with the brand and therefore create a buzz online as well as offline. 

Come on, how much fun would it be to actually give this a go!



*http://www.welovead.com/en/works/details/af9BiowC