Meta Real has been helping people to lose weight by teaching them how to eat correctly for over 25 years. But there was still 1 problem: how to stay in touch with their clients late at night - the most difficult time to resist the urge to eat. This is why we came up with the Virtual Fridge Lock, a security device against late night fridge raids. Every time a fridge with it installed is opened late at night, the device sends a post to the user's social networks. Telling all of their friends about the raid. The product launch was a success, but the buzz grew when the first units were installed in the fridges of some Meta Real students and of some journalists and bloggers. That's because each raid notification steered up the conversation, and without knowing it every user became ambassadors of Meta Real, generating an almost immeasurable amount of free publicity for the brand.

Instead of creating an advertising campaign, we decided to create something that would gain the attention of the news, something that would make people want to be a Meta Real participant.And so we came up with the Virtual Fridge Lock: a security device against late night fridge raids. Every time a fridge with the Virtual Fridge Lock installed is opened late at night, the device sends posts the raid in the user's social networks telling all of his friends about the raid.First we launched the product. The news about it gained buzz in health, and tech magazines and blogs. The next move was to start the distribution of the device, first to some Brazilian influencers and celebrities, than to all the new participants of the eating re-education program. The response was massive, bringing the 'obscure' Meta Real to the conversation.

And in the end every user, with every raid, became media. One problem (late night fridge raids) became an advertising platform, and steered up the conversation about the brand.

At the time of writing, this campaign is still live, so the full results are not yet available. However, it's possible to say that it was the most successful marketing initiative by MetaReal. MetaReal overtook Weight Watchers in media presence, earning more than $500,000 in media without spending on media buying.The number of entries increased more than 10 times over, and there was so many product requests, blog mentions, tweets, magazine and newspaper articles about it that we had to start making more and more Virtual Fridge Locks. And we're still doing so.