It’s a safe! It’s a subwoofer! It’s a mini fridge! To close out its Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase at E3, Xbox broke the internet with the announcement of its first-ever Series X Mini Fridge, set to launch this holiday season so fans can “Xbox and Chill.”
The mini fridge made its world premiere in a 60-second video that garnered 1.6 million views within the first 24 hours of posting. That’s 300,000 more views than its 90-minute E3 showcase video featuring upcoming releases from Xbox Game Studios and Bethesda Softworks. The mini fridge video also ranked number 12 on YouTube’s worldwide trends.
Ayzenberg Group—Xbox’s creative partner for the better part of a decade and social agency of record—and its in-house creative and animation teams worked tightly with Xbox to surprise fans with what ultimately became the highest performing asset of the show.
“For Ayzenberg Group, the E3 timeframe is the Super Bowl of marketing events for the game industry. This year, Xbox decided to truly embrace the meme that their Xbox Series X console looked like a fridge and produce an Xbox Mini Fridge. We were approached with less than two weeks to the big show to craft a video that landed this message with a combination of Xbox bravado and a tongue-in-cheek wink to the fans,” Gary Goodman, chief creative officer, Ayzenberg Group, tells AList.
The Mini Fridge, powered by “Xbox velocity cooling architecture,” caused levels of Xbox fandom to grow exponentially, as evidenced by enthusiasts’ comments across Xbox social media channels. The throughline? Xbox is the master of memes.
As Mikel Zugarramurdi Sandoval put it on YouTube: “They don’t just embrace the meme…they became the meme.” Another user, Read Me, said: “I’ve never bought an Xbox, but I NEED this!” The fridge may even become more popular than the console, according to Sprite-Nation: “Ngl, I wanna buy this more than the console.”
Xbox planted the idea for a mini fridge last April during Twitter’s first ‘Brand Bracket’ competition in which 16 brands battled it out to become the best-tweeting brand on the platform. When people voted to see Xbox and Skittles in the championship, Aaron Greenberg, Xbox general manager, Xbox Games marketing, Microsoft, tweeted: “Help @Xbox win this and we’ll put into production this year REAL XBOX SERIES X MINI FRIDGES!”
And so, the Twitterverse delivered. Now, Xbox fans have even more to look forward to as they feverishly await a Series X and Series S restock. In the meantime, Xbox, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, teased thirty titles during its E3 showcase, 27 of which will be included with Xbox Game Pass.
