Last summer the London-based beverage giant Diageo devised labels for its Brazilian-market whiskey that turned the bottles into a conduit for custom video. Timed to hit shelves for Father’s Day, in August, the labels enabled a gift giver to scan a code and upload a video message for Dad to the cloud. Dad could scan the code with his own phone to receive the recorded good wishes. The videos promoted the brand, tightened social bonds, and allowed the company to reconnect with both giver and recipient for future promotions—events, tastings, offers, and the like. Diageo transformed the most mundane form of advertising—a label with a logo—into an open-ended personal messaging system that could be woven into consumers’ lives.

A version of this article appeared in the March 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review.