Outdoor

Häagen-Dazs and Stella Artois turned Toronto billboards into a public flirt

By Ridhi · Sep 3, 2026· 4 min read

Häagen-Dazs put up a billboard in Toronto asking people to “Let’s Grab a Pint.” It meant ice cream.

Stella Artois saw something else entirely.

The beer brand found an empty billboard directly beside it and replied, “Are you asking us out?” Two days later, Häagen-Dazs came back again, this time parking a truck in front of both boards with one final question.

“Depends. You into spooning?”

None of it had been planned together. One brand simply answered the other, and the other answered back.

Häagen-Dazs asked Toronto to grab a pint first

The story actually started months earlier.

In March 2026, Häagen-Dazs launched Let’s Grab a Pint, a campaign built around a phrase normally associated with going out for a drink. Except the pint being offered was a pint of Häagen-Dazs ice cream.

Created by Courage, the campaign ran across film, print, social and experiential work. By mid-August, the outdoor campaign was appearing across Toronto, including a billboard that would accidentally become the start of a much bigger conversation.

The board simply invited people to grab a pint.

Then Stella Artois noticed it.

Stella Artois found the empty board next door

The Stella Artois and draftLine teams spotted the Häagen-Dazs campaign in Toronto and saw the obvious overlap.

Both brands sell something by the pint.

More importantly, there happened to be an available billboard directly beside the Häagen-Dazs one.

Within a week, Stella had booked it and put up its response.

“Are you asking us out?”

The two brands had not spoken to each other. Häagen-Dazs had not designed its billboard expecting a beer brand to answer. Stella simply found the neighbouring space and turned the existing ad into the first half of its own message.

Suddenly, two completely separate media buys looked like one conversation.

Häagen-Dazs answered two days later

Stella could have had the last word.

Häagen-Dazs and Courage decided otherwise.

On 2 September, a truck appeared in front of the two billboards carrying another line.

“Depends. You into spooning?”

The spooning joke brought the conversation straight back to ice cream while continuing the dating language Stella had introduced.

This time, Häagen-Dazs did not need to find another billboard. The truck temporarily became the third piece of media in the exchange.

The sequence now read almost like a conversation someone had written in advance.

“Let’s Grab a Pint.”

“Are you asking us out?”

“Depends. You into spooning?”

Except nobody had.

Three ads became one story

The strongest part of the exchange is that every new piece depended on the one before it.

Häagen-Dazs supplied the phrase that started everything. Stella Artois noticed that “pint” belonged naturally to beer too and turned it into a date. Häagen-Dazs then took Stella’s flirting and found another product joke inside it.

Each brand kept its own product at the centre.

Stella did not simply make fun of Häagen-Dazs. It answered with something only a beer brand could say.

Häagen-Dazs did not respond with generic brand banter either. “Spooning” pulled the joke straight back towards ice cream.

The media changed as the conversation grew too. One billboard became two. Then a truck arrived and made it three.

What started as an ordinary Häagen-Dazs outdoor campaign became a public conversation between two brands because someone at Stella Artois noticed the billboard next door.

And then someone at Häagen-Dazs decided the conversation was not over yet.