Transcript rose - Applied

Applied Technology - Unit 2
Research and Communication
“eBay c’est vous”
Rose Hall
Paris based advertising agency BETC EURO RSCG (catchy!) have created the
very first television advertising campaign for eBay France where their aim was to
take the brand image from that of a pure internet player and bring it into the
everyday French consciousness. “eBay C’est Vous” “You are eBay” is the name
of the campaign and brilliance is its game.
By giving a face to user IDs and promoting the diversity and richness of the eBay
community, the campaign boils down to one objective: putting the people who
make eBay what it is into their advertising – the users.
This was all achieved by holding a casting session that only eBay could create the auction on eBay.fr of 10 TV advertising shoots, broadcast in the brand’s
media space, giving eBay users the chance to bid for the opportunity to make
their own creative TV advertisement in which to sell their eBay item.
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The eBay campaign begins with a mysterious 30 second advert that
announces the auctions on its site of the 10 commercials. Once the
auctions closed the agency creatives, Olivier Apers and Hugues
Pinguet, worked with Denis Thybaud to create 10 adverts featuring the
winners and their items.
To maintain the spontaneity of the internet in the TV medium, and
therefore reduce the time between the auctions and the broadcasting
of the winning commercials as much as possible, eBay, BETC and the
production company COSA had to produce 10 commercials on a very
tight schedule, with maximum emphasis on quality. The objective of
the campaign is to prioritise and highlight the candidates, providing
them with a creative platform from which to sell their item, not to
feature them in ‘shopping channel’ or ‘reality TV’ type ads
All eBay C’est Vous winners representing 10 eBay categories
Click stills below to have a
taster of the adverts now
airing on French television.
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This eBay “C’est Vous” campaign is fantastic, it is a great example of
integration and is highly original and consistent with the eBay brand
and business. Although hard to criticise what I do believe is brilliant,
there is a very simple, inexpensive way this campaign could have
been integrated further – Semacode.
This fairly new technology was founded in 2003 by Simon Woodside,
who owns Semacode Corporation, an innovative software company
based in Canada. Since the establishment of Semacode the company
has become the leading provider of mobile marketing solution that
uses 2D symbology as a driving agent in the world.
Semacode is basically a system that fits together key pieces of
information, creating 2D barcodes. Using dots rather than lines
Semacode can store a lot more information. URLs can point to
virtually any kind of digital media. With new mobile phone technology
and the availability of WAP allows websites to cater for small screen
devices by adapting their existing infrastructure.
Semacode example
Semacode tags can be quickly captured with a mobile
phone's camera and decoded to find website addresses.
This address can then be accessed via the phone's web
browser. Semacode's mobile phone software uses image
recognition techniques to scan images. It seeks out if there
is a barcode in the camera's range, and if there is, spots
out the pattern of black and white squares and converts
them into a useful message. This message (which could
be a URL) then works with the phones technology to direct
you to the website in question.
The first ever use of Semacode was in 2003 for Quest Wireless, a mobile phone company. A
city-wide treasure-hunt was designed for secondary school students where players went
through the city "shooting treasure" with Qwest phone cameras. The winning team won a
$5,000 scholarship for their school. Online, a web site showed the players locations and
game progress, turning it into a very impressive event. The game was designed to promote
Qwest Wireless mobile phone offerings and was highly successful.
Since then, Semacode has been used in conjunction with many different mediums, creating
the perfect bridge between the physical world and the web. Business people can put
Semacodes on their business cards to link to constantly updated news and contact
information. Museums and exhibitions can tag their content with Semacodes to provide
information in multiple languages. Shops can tag their products with Semacodes, allowing
potential consumers to see reviews online. Storylines can be continued through the
technology and products can be advertised, it has even be used to wish the world above a
big hello by cutting a Semacode into a crop field so people in aeroplanes could see it - great
idea but I can’t imagine that many people would have their phones switched on whilst flying
over it.
Multilingual exhibitions
Product reviews
Comic book
Hello to the world above
H&M, the global clothes store ran an ad campaign based around Semacode technology
placed on billboard posters and magazine spreads. If the consumer likes the clothing the
model is wearing, they can point their mobile phone camera at the code, take a picture of it,
and it instantly takes you to H&M where they can purchase the item and it is charged to their
(pre-existing) H&M account and shipped out straight away. Point, snap, and buy! The future of
impulse shopping.
H&M ads enabling shopping to be done online directly from print.
Although extremely clever, easy and cheap, mainstream acceptance is not necessarily
going to come easily. Semacode faces a classic technology Catch-22, in that few people
will install the software if there are no Semacodes to read, and few people will create
Semacodes if no one has installed the software. Nevertheless, Marc Smith, a research
sociologist working with bar-code devices in Microsoft's Community Technologies Group,
said Semacode is on the right track.
"It's a great project and it's enormously resonant with what we're trying to do," he said.
"It's got a lot of value, and it's a step in the right direction."
Admittedly Semacode readers currently run on only a handful of Nokia camera phones
but a download is available from semacode.com and other providers for phones with built
in cameras and WAP technology, which is easy and in the majority of cases works well.
As before, The eBay “C’est Vous” campaign is a fantastic integrated idea combining
traditional television advertising with the power of digital, each medium playing a vital role
to help the other succeed. Semacode technology would be a perfect addition to this
innovation; a simple piece of direct mail, poster or magazine mixed with Semacode could
again combine traditional forms of advertising with digital. Semacode is very cheap, and
eBay can target correct target audiences with more ease than television.
The eBay “C’est vous” campaign created television adverts for different categories
including automobiles, home and garden, children, sports, music, home interiors,
computing, electronics, fashion and miscellaneous. In print advertising the automobile
advert could appear in an auto magazine, a poster for the sporting equipment could
appear in a gym, direct mail delivered to homes could advertise the house and garden
product, etc, making the campaign more direct and targeted.
Direct Mail
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Here I have illustrated through video how this
simple device could add more depth and
productivity to the campaign without over
spending. A more detailed explanation follows
on the next slide.
A simple piece of direct mail could be sent to homes or appear as a supplement in
magazines, one side illustrating the eBay “C’est Vous” campaign line and on the
other the eBay user name of one of the commercial winners. In the case of this
example the user name represents products for the home and garden category.
Along with the user name is a printed Semacode, which was created on
semacode.com by inserting the products URL. The receiver can then use their
mobile phone camera technology to access the product page and find out more
information and potentially buy the product there and then. This direct contact with
the product will draw people to not only the product but to eBay as a whole. The DM
also has a small written URL to allow those not interested in or unable access
Semacode. It was at this point that I used another piece of technology to make this
process easy and more direct. eBay users individual pages and products have huge
URL addresses which makes it very ugly to see on print adverts when written out and
near impossible to expect the receiver to type it into the address bar on their web
browser.
By using a free online service called Tiny URL (www.tinyurl.com) one can insert an
extremely long URL into a generator and get a tiny url out - for example
http://rp.betc.eurorscg.fr/public/campaign.php?&action=show&myfile=|f7fa7e1d8aa7
20abd28fde84b2abbfd3|444&cs=|d8d5b42c07fb0c69f0d83f5f214ece0e
would translate as http://tinyurl.com/2sok9o
Classified
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The videos to come illustrate how Semacode could
work with other forms of advertising, equally cheap
and viable. This video shows the simple insertion of a
Semacode message in an Auto trader magazine, with
only an intriguing message and the digital barcode,
those who can, will discover where the link will take
them. Using the product from the automobile category
the car is relevant to the media.
Ambient
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This video illustrates how the campaign could
possibly benefit from the use of ambient media, a
fairly new form of advertising that uses the
environment as its canvas. Advertising the same
eBay user and his product - an intriguing
Semacode link is positioned under the windscreen
wipers of old worn out cars, with the question
“Need a new car?”. The advert is grabbing the
attention of its potential customer at the point of
reception and is more likely to interest them.
When all is said and done eBay France and BETC have gone beyond boundaries and
created a truly brilliant, integrated campaign that inspires and excites me. Semacode is
equally fascinating and I do feel we will be seeing a lot more of it in the future. Phone
technology and capabilities are improving and when they do I feel that Semacode will be
a huge hit, primarily as a gimic but eventually as a much easier and efficient way to
communicate. eBay is a perfect example of a company that could and would adopt this
technology, the web is where their business is and Semacode ultimately acts as the
perfect bridge between the outside world and the internet.
“eBay is a company that’s one step ahead in terms of sales. We had to absolutely
reinvent our way of thinking, acting and creating, by expressing the spontaneity of the
web in a traditional advertisement,” explains Raphaël de Andreis, Co-President of BETC.
Thank you
Contacts and References
Julia Thet - BETC EURO RSCG - [email protected]
Philippe Brandt - BETC EURO RSCG - [email protected]
http://semacode.com/
http://www.adverblog.com/archives/003286.htm
http://members.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=pub-tv-2007
http://samdprod.typepad.com/actu/2007/10/ebay-cest-vous-.html
http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/publicite/actualite/0710/071030-ebay-met-ses-publicites-aux-encheres.shtml
http://www.scanlife.com/index.html
Monocle - Affaires, business, culture, design, edits, expo (Feb 2008)
Advertising is Dead Long live advertising ISBN 0-500-51314-7
Campaign Integrated Essays
Campaign - 19/10/07, 02/11/07
Thanks to Charlie Chambers for the video production - [email protected]