Marketing blah blah

The Grenoble Hockey team “Les Brûleurs de Loups” (“the Wolf Burners”) has a new advertising campaign, and it is a campaign with a difference. The big sign that caught our attention at the Grenoble Ice rink had the distinctive look of a vintage movie poster – nothing at all like a typical sports promotion.

Intrigued, Harding Marketing investigated.

We contacted Monsieur David Bertuzzi, the team’s communications manager. He explained that the Brûleurs’ new management group wanted to reframe the team’s advertising, and the new campaign is part of its strategy to depart from traditional sports promos. For the last two years, the group has worked to define the team’s core values: RESPECT, HUMILITY, PERFORMANCE. Along the way, it discovered that these were also the core values associated with families – especially in the 1920s.

So, how did that evolve into a vintage movie theme?

“For a sports team, a sports-related campaign would be ’old news’,” M. Bertuzzi says. Along with taking a fresh approach to promoting the team, he adds, the Brûleurs’ ‘20s cinema-style poster also delivers the message that seeing a hockey game is a leisure activity – like going to see a movie.

Plus, it shows that hockey players are easygoing, open-minded people who are happy to dress up to create a special, fun ad.

Even the poster’s tagline — “I’m Hockey” (“I’m OK”) got a reaction from us – which was, of course, exactly the idea!

Google Business Photos: a peek behind the shop doors

In its quest to map the whole planet using digital media, Google took an impressive first step with its Streetview service, which lets you navigate a street as if you were strolling down it. And then, by integrating the service with Google Maps and/or Google Earth, Google made a giant leap in virtual exploration.

That leap has been a huge success for Google – and brought extra advertising income, as well. But the Internet giant hasn’t stopped there. So now, along with letting you take a photorealistic walk through the streets of cities around the world, Google now lets you open the doors of the shops you pass on your virtual way, and see what is going on inside!

If you think about it, you’ll realize that Google is building a virtual replica of our real world, one step at a time – and, through these services, providing users with a foretaste of teleportation.

This short video, called “Dancing,” comes to you from Vanksen and was co-produced by talented artists’ collective Kourtrajmé and KT Productions. It was directed by Matthieu Tribes.

Evocative and as off-the-wall as it is funny, the film was created to educate the public about an often-overlooked social phenomenon affecting nearly 3 million people in France.

The POWA (People Opposing Women Abuse) “Neighborhood Experiment” was carried out in a South African suburb. This clip, which treats the topic of domestic abuse, is both powerful and disturbing.

It certainly gives you something to think about.

Tipp-Ex launches a very successful video campaign that combines interaction and humor.

The user becomes the movie director, determining what comes next by typing in an English word or phrase. You can test words like eats, drinks a beer, sleeps … much laughter guaranteed!

This imaginative campaign is available only in Web video format, but we’re betting it will touch many spirits via a variety of Web media.