The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2023
JD turns Beijing bus stops into AC-shaped cooling shelters — #自带空调的公交站 hits 75M+ reads
Instead of another promo ad, JD's agency built air-conditioner-shaped bus stops that mist-cool passersby — real relief that made a Weibo topic hit 75M+ reads.
JD.com (京东)
What it had to solve
JD's summer 'Cooling Festival' for home appliances ran in early July, the hottest weeks in Beijing. People sweltering at bus stops were its audience, but another promotional film would be ignored; the festival needed an idea that reached people on the street.
How it works
In July 2023, as Beijing hit its hottest stretch, JD was launching a home-appliance 'Cooling Festival' built around air conditioners. The agency Tian Yu Kong's argument was simple: rather than doing something marketers call a big idea, do something useful for people. So JD built real relief on the street.
The result was an air-conditioner-shaped bus stop. Pressing a red button released cool, fine mist over waiting passengers from above; inside the shelter sat a wall of 'cool jokes', cooling tissues and small fans. Several installations appeared around Beijing bus stops and crowded outdoor spots, timed to the festival.
JD filmed everything, and the case video shows ordinary moments rather than stagings: sanitation workers and delivery riders pausing under the mist mid-shift. Beijing TV's lifestyle programme reported the stunt, and Weibo's '#自带空调的公交站' topic passed 75 million reads.
The entry won a Silver in the Outdoor category at the 2024 Roi Festival, and the format proved repeatable: JD later expanded cooling-shelter installations to more cities, treating summer heat relief as an ongoing brand behaviour rather than a one-off promotion.
Why it lands
- It inverted the festival brief: instead of telling people about air conditioners, it let them feel the product's purpose in the heat.
- The installations were genuinely useful, so media and passersby promoted it for JD — including state-adjacent and city media coverage.
- Shooting real users created authentic case-film material that most campaign films have to fake.
- The 75M+ topic reads and repeat rollout showed utility ideas can scale into a repeatable brand programme.
What it did
The Weibo topic '#自带空调的公交站' (bus stops with built-in AC) reached 75M+ reads and Beijing TV's lifestyle show reported it. The installation ran at several sites, was captured as a case film, and won a 2024 Roi (金投赏) Silver in Outdoor.
What you can take
When the product solves a physical discomfort, the best ad can be the fix itself — utility generates goodwill, footage and word-of-mouth that a claim ad cannot buy.
Since then
JD treated the cooling shelter as a template: subsequent summers saw 'cooling stops' installed in multiple cities and a 2.0 version, the JD Cooling Pavilion, which added a social experiment contrasting old and new air conditioners. The 2023 original remains the documented seed — a commercial festival that behaved like civic relief, and won agency recognition for it.
Sources
- 京东“清凉站台”项目 (JD Cooling Platform project — official award entry)
- 京东搭了个「自带空调的公交站」
- 应对高温天气有“凉”策 京东清凉站台为户外劳动者提供防暑降温“缓冲站”
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