Google Translate Opens This Fridge To Give Canadians Free Beer

Marketing gimmicks are nothing new, but like Amazon's new Treasure Truck promotion, the really creative, original ones are pretty cool. In this case, it's from Molson, the Canadian beer maker. They had a special refrigerator built that runs Google's speech recognition and translation software, making it capable of recognizing as many as 40 different languages. As Molson's new commercial video shows, the fridge was left in public, encouraging people to open it by simply saying "I am Canadian." But it's not quite that easy.

As the video shows, people approach and say the necessary phrase in English. But that's not enough. The fridge needs to hear the words in six different languages before unlocking. What's inside? Why, free beer of course!

A bit of background: July 1st is next week, and that's Canada Day, the country's equivalent of Independence Day. As a Canadian brand, Molson likes to play up the patriotism by using "I am Canadian" as their marketing slogan. The commercial results in a nice mix of both Canadian pride and international connection. Oh, and cheap beer too.

Back to the fridge. It was apparently built by the digital studio ThinkingBox, and there's an interesting making-of/behind-the-scenes video of how it was put together. It's a real working device, and Molson will be placing it out in the wild next month in Toronto, when the city is hosting the PanAm Games.

VIA TechCrunch