A fridge full of free beer sounds like a great thing to find sitting on a street corner, but what if you needed a Canadian to open it? That was the puzzle posed by the Rethink advertising agency on behalf of Canada’s Molson brewery. This northern spring, Rethink set up red fridges at various locations around Europe that would only open if a Canadian passport was inserted.

The fridges were set up in Canterbury, London, the White Cliffs of Dover, Cassel in northern France, Brussels, and somewhere in rural Belgium. Along with bottles of Molson beer, the fridge had a plexiglass holder with a spring-loaded catch. Inserting a passport told a computer to capture an image of the passport with a modified webcam. It read the image and if it matched the crest on a Canadian passport, it released the latch on the fridge.

While the stunt was part of an advertising campaign, we're sure a few traveling Canadians also made some new friends as result of the promotion. That is, provided they were carrying their passports with them when called upon.

The video below shows the passport fridge in action.

Source: Rethink via designtaxi