Every summer, New Yorkers are notorious for going to ANY movie just for the air conditioned theater. So Midea made an entire movie that would lure New Yorkers into theaters to escape the heat: 90 MINUTES OF AIR CONDITIONING. A single shot of the new Midea U Air Conditioner blowing for 90 minutes in a cold Manhattan movie theater. It was called “the longest running product shot in history” and compared to Andy Warhol’s experimental film Empire. Sales in NYC and the tri-state area grew so much, by the end of the summer, Midea became the #1 AC brand in

This campaign was designed to be part of a wider effort that made Midea, a Chinese appliance company, go from an unknown brand in the US to the #1 AC brand in the country. Midea realized they had a killer product—the Midea U Air Conditioner, a model perfectly suited for big cities with older buildings. Midea focused on that unit and the New York market. Focus was one-third of the battle. Another third was to spread the message. Our I Heart U (Midea U) campaign covered a lot of ground while keeping the product in the center. The third part was to find a creative idea that made the claim believable, in a way that made New Yorkers feel like the brand belonged and understood the city. And so we did the stunt 90 MINUTES OF AIR CONDITIONING and distributed a social video about it to millions in NYC.

Every summer, New Yorkers are notorious for going to ANY movie just for the complimentary air conditioning in the theater. So Midea made a movie designed to lure New Yorkers into the theater to escape the heat: 90 MINUTES OF AIR CONDITIONING, a feature film consisting of just one epic shot of the Midea U AC blowing for 90 minutes, playing in an ice-cold Manhattan movie theater. Nothing more. We took over the Village East Cinema in Manhattan, NY. We promoted it like any other summer film, holding the public premiere on a hot summer day. New Yorkers flocked to it. We captured both the premiere and audience reactions to the film and spread it to millions of New Yorkers on social media, earning 440 million impressions.

The brief was to introduce the new Midea U Air Conditioner unit to New Yorkers. It’s a model perfectly suited for New York–style apartment windows in a city where many buildings lack central AC, and where it gets incredibly hot owing to the effect of all the tall buildings and asphalt.

Our audience was literally everyone in New York City. Regardless of who you are, the heat in the city during the summertime is so unbearable, and the existing solutions are so underwhelming, that the prospect of the first AC model designed for the NYC apartment window is a blessing. That said, New Yorkers are extremely busy and overwhelmed by advertising, so we needed to create a unique activation that would grab their attention and be tailored to their specific behavior during the unbearable summer heat.

This project was divided into two parts: produce a long-form feature film and implement the movie theater stunt experience.

To create the 90 MINUTES OF AIR CONDITIONING movie, we filmed a single continuous shot of the product blowing in an NYC apartment during sunset hours. The natural light and ambient sound (exterior and interior) helped to make clear it was just one long shot.

We took over Village East Cinema in downtown Manhattan during the summer. We promoted it like a blockbuster summer movie with posters and a customized marquee sign with our film title. We held a public premiere and impacted thousands of people with several showings over the summer. We captured the premiere and audience reactions to the film and, days later, spread it to millions of New Yorkers on social media, earning 440 million impressions.

The 90 MINUTES OF AIR CONDITIONING campaign was spread to millions of New Yorkers on social media, earning 440 million impressions. Critics dubbed the movie “the coolest film of the summer,” “the longest product placement ever,” and “the sequel to Andy Warhol’s Empire film. More impressively, sales in NYC and the tri-state area grew* so much that by the end of the summer, Midea had become the #1 AC brand in the country (in both sales and units sold). And just like that, this foreign brand became a real New Yorker. (*US Midea sales grew 51% in that period, mostly influenced by a 127% growth in the tri-state market, the region that includes NY.)

New York City can be unbearably hot during the summer. Because of all the asphalt and concrete, the city averages eight degrees warmer than surrounding areas. It’s a phenomenon called a “heat island.”

To escape the heat wave, New Yorkers are notorious for going to ANY movie just for the air conditioned theater. They don’t care about the film itself. They will watch anything for 90 minutes of cold air. This practice has a long-standing tradition, stretching back to the debut of modern AC in a New York City theater in 1925. Back then, AC was advertised on theater marquees on par with the films being shown. Movie theaters and AC have been forever linked since then, and they provide a basis for an unending stream of jokes every year when the heat starts to rise in NYC.