Yawning Travelers Rewarded With Free Coffee In Airport Ad Campaign



Goodness knows the number of times we’ve walked through endless airport terminals feeling like a zombie – jet lagged, disoriented, and in need of a serious caffeine fix. Well, a new airport advertising campaign is rewarding bleary-eyed passengers with a free cup of joe, just for yawning.

The Douwe Egberts company placed a coffee vending machine with facial recognition technology in South Africa’s O.R. Tambo International Airport. The machine was activated by yawning, and any passenger who figured out the trick was gifted a steaming hot coffee.The coffee campaign is just one of many kooky tactics being used by advertisers to target airport passengers. According to CNN, companies believe fliers are the perfect captive audience for advertising –- after all, we’re trapped in the airport, feeling stressed, bored and ready for a distraction. Not to mention that if you can afford a flight, you probably have a higher degree of disposable income to spend on whatever advertisers are trying to tempt you with.

The strategy is exactly what Heineken was banking on when it launched it’s “Dropped” campaign at New York’s JFK airport a few months back. The company gave travelers the chance to drop their current travel plans, spin a “departure roulette” wheel and travel to a new destination instead.