Marketing blah blah

Ah, the banana! Gentle. sweet, exotic, colorful…and loaded with nutritional benefits. An incredibly simple, pure, incomparable design, the shape of a smile. The Union of Banana Producers of Guadeloupe and Martinique is launching a new campaign on our screens. The 3 short films invite us to be kind and respectful to the delicate fruit. The prosaic everyday activities featured in each film are interrupted by a charming and nostalgic moving-picture postcard (with a great sound track) from the Caribbean Islands. The campaign never mentions price, performance, or technology. It is a sweet, restful armchair voyage, and it is thus a great departure from the advertising norm.

Total cost of the campaign: half of the union’s annual budget of four million euros (1,5 million euros from producers, supplemented by a 2,5 million euro grant from the European Union and the Office of Overseas Agricultural Economy Development).

A creative spirit needs a steady diet of new inspiration to stay productive. The problem is that, although the quest for ”eye candy” is a pleasant pursuit, it is also a time-consuming one. Luckily, social networks (again!) understand that lovers of the visual arts are in a never-ending search for new influences — hence, the newest trend: ”art-bookmarking.” The principle is quite simple: Instead of posting a daily inspiration on Facebook or Twitter, you share your latest finds on a dedicated blog (like this one) and oncourage other contributors to add their latest eye-candy treats. The result is an unending flood of  pics bookmarked by thousands of creative spirits worldwide. But it gets even better. As you bookmark other contributors’ posts, the site compiles your feedback in a “likes profile” and then uses that information to serve you with daily inspiration chosen expressly for you! The best-known of these sites is www.ffffound.com , where your spirit can be refreshed by images like this every ten minutes:  

You may also want to try www.dropular.net, which is less design-focused and full of zany imagery. Now go bookmark something!

Beauty giant L’Oréal is celebrating its centennial year by reinforcing the values of sharing and generosity with “100 Projects.” Focused in the areas of education, scientific research, and self-esteem, the philanthropic projects are designed to assist communities in need all over the world, and every branch of the company is taking part. To mark the occasion, the L’Oréal website is displaying anniversary messages from artists, models, beauty professionals, and scientists. An elegant, comprehensive press file is also available for download.

Anniversary massage for the L'Oréal centennial

Do you want to find out what people are thinking about your brand (or your client’s brand) via just one click? Easy! Noah Brier created a website called http://www.brandtags.net/ — “a collective experiment in brand perception” — where you can do just that. You can also share your own perceptions by typing, in the text field provided, the first word or sentence that pops into your head when you see a brand name. See the Lego example below.

Check out the new WWF campaign about the environmental emergency.

Large French supermarket chain Intermarché has launched a global branding campaign that includes:

• A new visual identity. The logo was refreshed, and the brand symbol (the musketeer) was re-created to look more modern and more stylized.
• A new look for the website. It is now more ergonomic, with a pleasant color scheme that is easy on the eyes. The content has been recrafted, as well, to reflect the MAG 3 concepts: low everyday prices; convenient locations; and sales outlets that are human in scale.
• Finally, a promotional campaign was launched. The components included promotional flyers, video banners, and a dedicated website with video traps by Pascal Sellem.

Created in 1995 by Handicapzero, a portal that provides access to vision-related information for prople with partial or complete visual impairment, the Pharmabraille service delivers drug notice information to blind and partially sighted patrons in a number of accessible formats: a Braille transcription of the information can be delivered  by post within a 48-hour timeframe; the notice can be viewed on line in large-character format; or an audtio version can be heard and even downloaded as an MP3 file. The website allows users to personalize their background, text color, and text size. The service is totally free of charge.

Eleven years after the advent of its synchronized swimming babies, Evian has revitalized this concept with a new generation of youthful advertising spokespeople – this time, babies who dance on roller skates.

When Badoit needed to create new bottle designs for its Green and Red product lines, the company invited students at the Beaux Arts in Paris to participate in a design competition. The competition would not only help Badoit publicize its new products, but also provide the company wirh fresh ideas without requiring a major financial outlay.

On the Badoit micro-website you can review the 20 finalists and, once the competition ends, see which of them was declared the winner.

To herald the launch of its ‘Ushuaïa Bio’ range of roll-on deodorants, the brand Ushuaïa (Lascad / Groupe L’Oréal) chose advertising agency La Belle & La Bête to create a special Web site. The site takes visitors on an immersive sensory trip, rich in content. The experience includes an invitation to a journey in rich media to discover four destinations associated with the product’s four key ingredients; customers’ video testimonials; a multi-faceted, expert-led bio view; and a co-launched e-mag whose bloggers have links to influential communities on the Web. The site reinforces the media launch of the new range, which includes a TV spot as well as planned on-line promotions on several well-known sites (Yahoo, TF1, MSN, aufeminin.com, Doctissimo). Finally, the three writers who collaborate on the Ushuaïa Bio e-mag are widely respected members of the women’s blogosphere.

http://www.ushuaia-bio.fr/#/les-univers

Fear of unemployment in both the United States and Europe has led to a decline in consumerism and, therefore, sales. To remedy that, new marketing offers are appearing on both sides of the Atlantic to provide the consumer with a ‘bail-out’ in case of job loss. For example, a JetBlue program refunds customers for trips canceled due to unemployment; and a Virgin Mobile USA program covers customers’ wireless service plans for up to 3 months in case of job loss.

Typography is an art. Below are 24 of the most creative alphabets we’ve seen:

Clic here to access the credits.