The German automaker Volkswagen recently produced a viral video starring everyday people walking up and down a flight of stairs, only there was one major catch—after the stairs had been deserted one day, Volkswagen employed a team to transform the entire flight of stairs into a virtual piano and install a camera above it. Later, when people arrived to use the stairs, creativity and hilarity ensued. Some tried unsuccessfully to ignore it the music they were making; others reveled in the excitement of having found a fun, new expressive instrument. The entire community that had once abandoned the stairs in favor of riding the escalator began using the stairs again almost exclusively. The social dynamic was completely shifted from a forgotten staircase to a forgotten escalator.

The aim of Volkswagen’s campaign was to encourage people to use a flight of stairs, rather than the adjacent escalator to add a little extra exercise into their daily routine. Making the stairs more fun to use was a resounding success. Walking up a flight of stairs is a good source of exercise—certainly better exercise than riding an escalator. When the stairway also becames a good source of fun and creativity, the choice between piano stairs and escalator is simple.

There is a major underlying statement about social media hiding here that is not immediately obvious: social media is not limited to the internet, but propagated by it. An actual physical community was able to enjoy this social experiment, and because the experiment was part of a social media campaign, the rest of the world was able to enjoy it too. Kudos goes out to Volkswagen from us at The Social Den, for executing such a brilliant and creative campaign—but more importantly, for making more things fun.