These Videos From Spain, Ukraine and France Made SK-II Rethink Their Marketing

Image via SK-II.com.sg (click to access)

Image via SK-II.com.sg (click to access)

Earlier this year, SK-II (one of the few beauty brands that P&G decided not to sell this summer) announced a new brand philosophy: #ChangeDestiny. The big idea is that women should take their destiny in their hands, to position SK-II as a brand that allows women to do more and “to inspire women to change their own destiny, regardless of the little “dictators” in their life.” The campaign was launched with a film featuring Misa Kuranaga – the first Asian to become Boston Ballet’s principle dancer – and showed how her life story defied the odds to achieve professional success. To bring the brand platform to life online and make it more relevant to young consumers, SK-II also turned to crowdsourcing. Continue reading →

Vintage Packaging Of Our Favorite Brands & Products

Museum of Brands Packaging and Advertising Cereal Boxes

A couple of weeks ago I visited the “Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising” in London. It’s not far away from Portobello Road and describes itself as “a treasure trove of retro design and memories” which instantly caught my attention as I am a fan of memorabilia! The museum, founded by a collector called Robert Opie, indeed gathers over 12,000 branded items from our ancestors’ daily lives, items that are collectively telling a story about us as a society, us as consumers, us as brand fans, us as citizen. The friendly people at the museum told us not to take photos, but I would like to share just some as a way to promote the place, as I enjoyed my visit a lot! Continue reading →

How Doritos Crowdsourced Its Advertising Since 2006 #CSReport2015

doritos crowdsourcing illustration

Doritos chips were invented in 1966 by Arch Clark West, a marketing VP at Frito-Lay in the early 1960s, who died at age 97 a couple of years ago (his whose family planned to “sprinkle Doritos at his graveside service“). To see what Dortitos 1.0 looked like, check out the original Doritos pack on the very cool “Vintage Frito-Lay” Pinterest board.

Today, the brand is very famous for its “Crash The Super Bowl” advertising contest, in which it invites filmmakers to create ads that can be selected to be aired during the Big Game. In this post, I’d like to dig deep, very deep into the brand’s crowdsourcing history (you may also check Dan Lamoureux’s blog or the contest’s Wikipedia page). I’ve taken out the Doritos stories from my crowdsourcing timelines (Doritos is not a Best Global Brand) but I want to still share it, so I do it with this blog post, which will end with a reference to my “The State of Crowdsourcing in 2015” trend report available on eYeka.

Continue reading →

Quirky Acquires Consulting Firm To Start Servicing FMCG Companies

Click to see the photos my brother Maël and I took when we visited the Quirky HQ in New York, last year.

Click to see the photos that my brother and I took when we visited Quirky’s HQ last year.

Quirky, a company I blogged about quite regularly, has just announced the acquisition of the consulting firm Undercurrentin pivot to serve corporate clientsas Inc. notes. It is an interesting move, as it represents a shift from being (only) a product maker & distributor to (also) being a crowdsourcing agency that works for big clients. “Having joined forces with Undercurrent, Quirky can now give large companies access to its community of inventors and will give those companies exclusivity to certain product ideas,” Graham Winfrey’s Inc. article explains. So they’ll do pretty much the same than eYeka. Continue reading →

Just Off The Press: Our #CSReport2015 Trend Report

eYeka April Wallpaper

I am happy to share the “The State of Crowdsourcing in 2015” trend report (“How the world’s biggest brands and companies are opening up to consumer creativity“) with you, which we wrote in collaborative spirit with François Pétavy (CEO of eYeka) and Joël Céré (Insights & Innovation Solutions Director at eYeka). For the first time since the beginning of the crowdsourcing phenomenon, besides a sporadic blog post in late 2013, this report takes a (big) step back to look at the evolution of crowdsourcing since the mid-2000s, providing important insights about how it is used for marketing and innovation across the globe. Continue reading →

10 Ads Based on Barry Louis Polisar Music

Image via autoevolution.com (click to see article)

The Volswagen ad from the UK, with B. L. Polisar sountrack (image via autoevolution.com)

Have you seen Juno? If you haven’t (even if you have) you may not know Barry Louis Polisar, the singer whose song “All I Want Is You” is used as the opening soundtrack. A true feel-good-song. Barry Louis Polisar is a famous author and singer-songwriter who writes children’s music and numerous children’s books, poems and stories – but Juno brought him to fame.

I found that after Juno (2007), two of his songs – or covers of them – have been widely used in advertising for brands like Nescafé, Coca-Cola, Volkswagen or Ronald McDonald House Charities. Here are 10 ads based on 2 of Polisar’s most famous songs, “All I Want is You” and “Me And You.” Continue reading →

Did You Notice The Cyclists in Air France #FranceIsInTheAir Spot?

Image via AirFrance.fr

It’s been 2 weeks since Air France’s latest spot, France Is In The Air, is running internationally. The 45-second advertisement is part of the brand’s new global campaign, which started on April 2nd with print, radio and web ads in 12 countries (including Brazil, China, the USA, Russia, Senegal or Switzerland). What I like about it is that it has an Evian Babies feel to it: a stylish and simplified background, people swinging (instead of swimming) through the screen in a gracious manner, a focus on music rather than words. A very nice creative, mixing retro and glamor, like the print ads. But have you noticed the cyclists?

There’s nothing that looks more like a plane than another plane,Tiphaine du Plessis, associate director at BETC, the agency behind the campaign, told l’ADN. The strength of the company lies in “its roots, the French state of mind: when you put one foot in an Air France plane, you are already somewhat in France,” she says. The campaign plays on the globally recognized “positive values” like its traditions, history, gastronomy, architecture or music.

Continue reading →