Ogilvy Deploys Purposeful Outdoor Ads to Promote IBM Smarter Cities

IBM Smarter Cities

IBM and the Paris office of ad agency Ogilvy & Mather have created a series of outdoor advertising with an added practical purpose. The colorful ad installations were constructed to include a bench, an overhang to provide shelter from the rain, and a ramp to help people more easily navigate stairs.

The campaign promotes IBM’s “People for Smarter Cities” initiative, which looks to bring people from around the world together to collaborate on solutions that improve the ways that cities function.

[via Gute Werbung]

France

French Yarn-Maker Offers Savings to Customers Who Knit Their Own Coupons

Bergère de France - Knit Your Own Coupon

Bergère de France has been producing high-quality yarn in Bar-le-Duc, France since 1946. Over the years, their product range has grown to include patterns for crochet and knitting; needles and knitting accessories; and supplies for embroidery and cross-stitching.

Recently, the yarn-maker’s ad agency BEING came up with a creative and inspired campaign to help increase business at the Bergère de France boutiques. Customers could use their leftover yarn, and using one of four patterns, hand-knit a coupon to earn savings of 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% off of their next purchase. The more complex the pattern was, the more savings the customer could earn for their handiwork.

A great example of creating an campaign experience that connects directly to the customer’s use of the product. You can check out the knitted coupons in a photo gallery on BEING’s Facebook page.

[via Ads of the World]

France

French Ad for Toilet Paper Shows That Even Digital Technology Has It’s Limits

Le Trefle - Digital Has It's Limits

A new ad for Le Trèfle toilet paper shows one man’s obsessive quest to replace paper with digital in his home, constantly chiding his partner and child to use a digital tablet as the “better way” of creating art, leaving notes on the fridge door, playing a game or simply reading a book in bed.

But digital technology has it’s limits, and his whole mission unravels when he finds himself sitting on the toilet with nothing but an empty roll of toilet paper. Then it’s time for ‘Emma’ to get her revenge.

While there may not be a virtual bidet app, the toilet paper manufacturer has created a free iPhone app called ‘Où sont les toilettes?‘ that helps people find the nearest, and hopefully well-stocked washroom.

The ad was created by Leo Burnett France.

[via LSA]

France

Citroën Celebrates Nine Straight WRC Titles With Diorama of Rally Scenes

Citroen WRC Diorama

2012 marked an unprecedented ninth straight FIA World Rally Championship title for Sébastien Loeb and Daniel Elena. To celebrate, french automaker Citroën hired UK-model maker Kieron Barter of Funky Lemon Design to create a amazing diorama and mount it on the rood, windshield and hood of a Citroën DS3.

The diorama took Kieron nearly two months to complete, and features displays of nine different rally events and their unique terrain, one display for every championship. The terrain is complete with 1:43 scale versions of the team’s championship-winning cars.

The car and diorama were unveiled at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) in London earlier in February. Citroën plans a dealer tour for the car and will display it at various events this summer.

For a close-up look at the diorama, check out the full gallery at the Car Scoop blog.

[via Car Scoop]

FranceUK

Air France Mobile App Unlocks Music Tracks Hidden in the Sky

Air France: Music in the Sky

If you’re at an airport and you notice people their iPhones up at the sky, they might not be taking pictures of the clouds. They just might be unlocking music hidden in the sky by Air France.

The Music in the Sky app enables it’s users to find, unlock and collect dozens of music tracks from a playlist of established and emerging artists. The tracks curated by Air France Music are different depending on which country you are currently located. The sky here in Canada contained tracks from artists including Fleet Foxes, Lana Del Ray, Feist, Kanye West and many more.

Simply point the iPhone up to the sky or ceiling, (it uses the built-in gyroscope to detect the angle of the phone) and scan around until you locate one of the floating music notes. Zero-in on the music note until you’re ‘locked-on’ to it. The track will then be unlocked and added to the playlist in the app, available to you to stream at anytime.

The Music in the Sky app was developed by BETC Paris.

France

It’s Dance vs. Prance: Humans Battle Horse in OPI’s Nail Polish Dance-Off

OPI Instinct of Color

One of the last things I expected to see today was a moon walking horse. But, that’s just one move that this horse performs in ‘Instinct of Color’, a video from nail product company OPI.

The horse, dubbed Lady in Black, after the classic black nail lacquer is trained by equestrian trainer Mario Luraschi, and is up to the challenge of going step-for-step with four human dancers.

Not only can the horse match their steps, she can also match their style, going head-to-head wearing one of the four nail/hoof lacquer colors used by the dancers: Pink-ing of You, Red My Fortune Cookie, Need Sunglasses? and No Room for the Blues.

The video was created by ad agency DAN Paris.

The song used in the clip is ‘Down the Road’ by French DJs C2C.

France

SNCF Promotes Direct Rail Link by Inviting People of Lyon to Take a Look at Brussels

SBNA 'Take a Look at Brussels'

It takes only 3 hours and 20 minutes to cover the 730 kilometers between Lyon, France and Brussels in Belgium by TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, meaning ‘High-Speed Train’).

To promote the direct-link, French National Railway Corporation SNCF set up a special installation in Lyon’s Place de la République. The large cube, emblazoned with the message ‘Passez une tête à Bruxelles’ (‘Take a Look at Brussels’), invited pedestrians passing through the square to place their head into a small hole on the side.

To their surprise, their face appeared on a giant screen at the Mont des Arts, in Brussels, where the mayor, his official band (doesn’t every mayor have an official band?) and curious members of the public welcomed them to their city.

The campaign was created by TBWA/Paris.

France

Peugeot Promotes Hybrid4 Features with Interactive Graphic Novel

Peugeot Hybrid4 Graphic Novel

French-automaker Peugeot is promoting its new 3008 Hybrid 4 with an interactive graphic novel titled ‘A Mission in Four Modes’. The graphic novel is presented as a a visually stunning parallax HTML5 website.

A parallax website is designed with multiple layered backgrounds that move at slightly different speeds creating an illusion of depth. Awwwards.com recently posted 30 great examples of parallax scrolling websites.

A Mission in Four Modes features a female spy who’s trying to grab a few pictures of some secret information that she’s obviously not supposed to see. As the door blasts open and guns are drawn, we see the mission switch to ‘sport mode’ for a quick escape. Our heroine dives through the glass window and races away from the guard dogs, and the chase is on.

The story was illustrated by Gerald Parel (who has designed covers for Marvel) with site developed by Sylvain Tran for Paris agency BETC Digital.

Vitaminwater France Celebrates the Triumphs of Everyday Athletes

Vitamin Water Athletes

Usain Bolt, Gabby Douglas, Michael Phelps; these are just three of the superstar athletes that captured the world’s attention during the last two weeks of the London Olympics. But, what about those millions of regular everyday folks who are playing their favorite sports without the world’s attention?

To give these everyday athletes a thrill (although a few in the video don’t look particularly thrilled at the attention) Vitaminwater France hired a real sports commentator to hide in the bushes near sport locations and provide a running description of the athletes activity. Maybe something is lost in translation, but hearing the announcer implore the swimmer with, “Don’t stop, little salmon, don’t give up! Go lay your eggs all the way up that podium” is a little weird.

No medals were on the line for these folks, but they were offered up bottles of Vitaminwater for their athletic effort. Stay hydrated little salmon.

The campaign was created by Sid Lee Paris.

[via popsop]

France

Thirsty Parisians to Use Wifi-Enabled ‘Smart Drop’ for Evian Delivery

Reminiscent of the Red Tomato pizza at the press of a button fridge magnet, Evian water is promoting it’s Paris water delivery service evianchezvous.com (Evian at Home) with a similar Wifi connected device.

The Smart Drop attaches to your fridge and allows a user to choose an Evian product, pick a time and date when you’d like it delivered. The device then uses your wifi connection to send the order directly to Evian. Evian hopes to offer the Smart Drop to it’s most faithful users by 2013.

Is it useful? Maybe, but it’s hard to believe that the fridge of the future will be covered with so-called ‘smart objects’. Your fridge is likely ti be able to track the objects that are stored within it. Embedded sensors in food packaging like milk containers can track ‘best before’ dates and create a shopping list that can sync an app on a homeowner’s smartphone.

The Smart Drop was created by BETC Digital

France