Marketing blah blah

Is donating to charity one of your New Year’s resolutions this year? Here is an English “ambient marketing” initiative that makes charity as easy as scanning a QR code. The British association Simon on the Streets , which provides assistance to the homeless of west Yorkshire’s City of Leeds, is testing the idea of collecting donations via mobile. It works like this: a piece of cardboard imprinted with a QR code is placed near where the homeless congregate. Scanning the QR code takes you to Just Giving, the largest online fundraising community in the UK, a website designed to enable easy, safe charitable donations. Unlike direct donation (which always leaves you wondering if your handout will be used to buy alcohol), when you give via Just Giving, you can be sure that your donation will be put to a good use.

A new concept in high-end online food markets has arisen. Thanks to the website Epicerie de Rungis (grocery store of Rungis), the world’s largest fresh food market – whose location near Paris, France was previously the exclusive domain of food professionals – is now accessible to everyone.

Rungis is a 7,420 billion € (in 2009) business that sells 1.5 tons of foodstuffs daily – foodstuffs that are ultimately consumed by 18 million people. Now the market’s rare, impeccably fresh, high-quality products, which range from lemon caviar and white truffles of Alba to more than 160 different seafood items and a host of other delicacies, are available not only to chefs, but to individual customers as well.

A fact sheet supplying background information (including exact name, origin, history, taste, and preparation) accompanies each item, and delivery in 24 hours and cold chain refrigeration during shipment are guaranteed.

Epicerie de Rungis also has a blog that highlights seasonal products and offers behind-the-scenes views, for example, of the market’s seafood pavilion and poultry areas. The blog and a Facebook page also promote Rungis through the use of games, with € 120 shopping vouchers as prizes.

Especially at this season – the end of the year – full-fledged foodies and demanding amateurs alike can find true culinary happiness at Epicerie de Rungis.

Founded in 1934 to serve the press, Studio Harcourt soon became widely known for it celebrity portraits. Now, the prestigious photography studio has launched “Cabine Photo Luxe,” an express service that offers the public a unique expertise in portraiture. Studio Harcourt – 10, rue Jean Goujon, Paris – promises “more than a photograph … an experience.” The studio’s ordinary charges range from 900€ for an “Instant” one-hour portrait, to 1900€ for a two-hour “Prestige” portrait. But now, in 10 seconds (and for just 10€) Cabine Photo Luxe offers the mainstream market a free, playful, and spontaneous approach – a kind of ready-to-wear version of photographic haute couture. Available as one 10×15 cm photo or four ID card–size ones, the Cabine Photo Luxe portraits are printed using a thermal process. The studio’s new service is currently available in Paris at the cinema MK2 and the store Franck & Fils. It will soon be launched in other parts of France as well; look for “Cabines Photo Luxe” to pop up in the winter at the cinemas Pathé and Gaumont.
As part of its strategy to boost brand visibility, the studio will also carry lines of home fragrances, candles, special reserve wines, and champagne under the Studio Harcourt name.

… a follow-up to the article “Cows that go buzz”

Recently, a genuine fake story about a French cattle breeder’s QR-encoded cows went around the world.

The idea came from blogger “Marie Ben” and her friends the “fêlés morbihannais,” big believers in the new tech (and in cows) who chose to channel these enthusiasms towards creating a buzz for the QR-code-plugging website myqreation.fr.

The group developed its viral fake video using real cows, a real operation, real QR codes, a real game, and even a real actor (as the cattle breeder) – and, of course, the help of a few real good friends.

Real or not, the video has achieved its goal: it has gone around the world; it’s been the subject of numerous articles; and apparently it has even impressed two Breton farmers, who are eagerly planning their own real QR campaigns based on the concept of encoded cows.

Start with some cows, add a few QR codes, and multiply the result by one French cattle breeder’s incredible idea. What’s the result? Cows that create a buzz – and great publicity that boosts the breeder’s sales.

After a successful first edition in 2010 (550,000 visits, 210,000 videos viewed, 37,000 votes cast, and 50,000 Facebook fans¹, MAAF – an insurer with a sense of humor – is once again launching a campaign with the theme of “the French Moaners’ Championship.”

The campaign for the right to “râling” (too bad this is an Anglicism) takes a page from MAAF’s TV ads, in which a dissatisfied customer asks for the manager, who is always able to offer a solution. Thus, the campaign challenges the French (93% of whom admit to bitching often or very often²) to complain, gripe, and grumble with complete legitimacy, while keeping their râling creative and funny. Just one requirement: just as in MAAF’s ads, each improvisation must start with the famous phrase “Call me the manager!”

The 2011 competition runs from September 19 to November 15. Users will vote on the 100 best videos, and the top 30 will be then voted on by a panel of “expert moaners.” The top 10 results will then be announced on television in December – with the best French moaner winning 5000 Euros.

So, if you get an urge to complain, or have some reason for discontent to share, just post your video directly on the “râling” site, www.championnatdesraleurs.com – or try your luck at the auditions, which are scheduled in eight cities in France.

MAAF will also be hosting a Facebook fan page ”The ‘râling’: I groan and I like that,” throughout the campaign.

¹ According to a press release from MAAF dated September 3, 2010.

² According to an OpinionWay survey conducted by the MAAF in 2010.

Great intrigue, realistic action, good music … basically worth watching, I think. But, is it really one world against the other – the wealthy and powerful against the rest of us? Or could it be that 40 years of that kind of fighting is long enough, and the new year will bring welcome change?

http://greenpeace.fr/40ans/

Welcome to the All Blacks

While the rest of us waited for the start of the Rugby World Cup, advertisers were hard at work creating rugby-themed campaigns—with widely varying approaches and, of course, equally varying degrees of success. Countless brands used the themes and values of the rugby ​world to promote their products expressly to World Cup fans.

Of these, there was one I especially liked: a self-promotion trailer for “Canal+” that relied solely on mood and the element of surprise, managing to “talk rugby” without ever showing a single field, player, or ball! A really smooth, fine ad. It is taking me me several viewings to identify all the symbols of New Zealand and the team shown in this original teaser: a black fish, a black dog…

Discover more at:

When Red Bull Media House, Brain Farm Digital Cinema and Quicksilver team up with the best pro snowboarders, the result is The Art of Flight – a film celebrating the art of snowboarding that took two years of work and adventures to make. The movie’s landscapes are beautifully filmed, the tricks get insane aerial amplitude, and the soundtrack – brainchild of France’s Anthony Gonzalez and his band M83 – evokes high, faraway snow-capped peaks that are the stuff of dreams.

Thanks to global Web media coverage, the trailer for The Art of Flight has had 1.5 million viewings in its first week on the Web. The film will be launched in cinemas, downloadable from iTunes, and available on DVD and Blu-ray. A limited-edition book version will be released and, at the request of Red Bull, an 8-part “making-of” TV documentary will air in early 2012.

Brain Farm first achieved fame with the 2008 film That’s It, That’s All – an earlier collaboration between Travis Rice (widely regarded as the world’s best snowboarder) and Curt Morgan (filmmaker/art director) that suggested what The Art of Flight now confirms: the era of do-it-yourself snow-sports filming is over. Both films bring extreme aesthetics and elite vision to winter sports cinematography, using state-of-the-art equipment such as the HD Cineflex V14 camera – a gyro-stabilized remote system with software first developed for the military – and the high-speed Phantom HD Gold camera, which produces graceful slow motion.

Red Bull is known for sports sponsorship, to which it devotes more than 15% of its yearly revenue – revenue that reached 3.785 billion Euros in 2010, thanks to that year’s worldwide consumption of more than 4.204 billion units of Red Bull energy drinks. The Art of Flight’s production budget – still confidential, of course – is estimated at several million dollars.

The Art of Flight’s global cinema tour will kick off in New York on September 7. The first showings in Europe will be in Munich on November 8 and in Paris on November 26.

One regret: the women’s snowboard does not seem to be represented in this project, while Quicksilver sponsors many events in the feminine snow-sports.

L'Alpe, cover

Published every 3 months, L’Alpe is a book-format magazine that is totally dedicated to the Alpine area. It is created and printed in Grenoble, in the heart of the Alps. It is a work of art—a jewel of typographic treatments, of design, and of illustration, all carefully chosen to complement each other and the magaxzine content. In each issue one feature of the Alpine lifestyle (cows, in this issue) is explored in depth with articles on a variety of related subjects, such as archeology, history, ethnology, nature, art, mythology, and even gastronomy.

L’Alpe—a typical two-page spread. Now The magazine can be browsed online, and many full-length articles are available online as well—not only in French, but also translated into neighboring Alpine languages of German and Italian.

When augmented reality meets marketing, the goodies aren’t just inside the packaging anymore — they are the packaging, too. It may look like a box or a bottle, but in front of a webcam, it comes to life as a video game in glorious 3-D.

See this new marketing trend in action:

• Chocapic
  
  

• Coca Cola
  

• Mc Donald’s
  

With summer coming, Magnum, the famous ice cream brand, is launching a new product: “Magnum Temptation Hazelnut with chocolate bonbons.”

To promote it, the brand has crafted an interactive campaign consisting of an advergame called “Pleasure Hunt” in which the heroine (a young woman—and probably Magnum’s typical customer) is searching for bonbons through a wealth of partner websites, all representatives of modern pleasures: travel, jewelry, luxury hotels …

The mini-game is fairly simple and feels a bit like a Mario Bros. classic (move forward and backward; jump to recover the maximum chocolate coins), but it reveals a wonderful digital world. It’s highly interactive with seamless integration of the the partners and websites associated with the advergame—for example, the heroine drives a car on Saab’s website and a hang glider on St Glaubitz’s, just to name a few.

It’s a tasty collaborative marketing and partnership effort. Have a try! Or, if you are not a player, watch this video that tells the heroine’s story across the various websites.