Treasure hunting
We'll be talking about a literary treasure hunt that mobilised the whole planet, a 20-minute nature ‘prescription’ for our mental health, or a night in the middle of a library!
Good morning folks!
A lot of you have made suggestions about the product I'm going to launch (and you've been very creative, too: I've been told about cheese, a photo album, a perfume, a holiday notebook...). The suspense is over: I'll be revealing what it's all about on Instagram tomorrow. So don't forget to subscribe to find out!
Also as promised, this month I'm opening up 10 new places to join Club Komando. Why should you join? To gain access to the 1st creative search engine with over 700 tagged campaigns (executive communication, political communication, creative formats on CSR, employee advocacy, etc.) from which to draw inspiration.
In the meantime, enjoy your reading!
🫡 Kéliane — keliane@komando.studio
The worldwide treasure hunt for Jay-Z's autobiography
In short — How do you emerge in the face of your competitor - and not least - Google? That was Bing's goal. So the search engine decided to make a big splash by taking advantage of the imminent release of Decoded, Jay-Z's autobiography, to organise a huge treasure hunt. The idea? Spread out the 320 pages of the book in unusual places related to what they tell us, and therefore to Jay-Z's life (eg: at a bus stop in Detroit, at the bottom of a hotel pool in Miami, on a parked car in Brooklyn, cheeseburger wrappers in New York, a pool table at Jay's 40/40 Club, a rooftop in New Orleans... ) and gradually reveal clues, every week for a month, obviously via Bing Maps, so that they can be found by Internet users, who can discover the book before its release and also win concert tickets or a golden ticket to all the artist's concerts for life.
Why it matters — Because this treasure hunt has become a global cultural phenomenon that has exceeded all expectations, and has been picked up by the media, talk shows and influencers, to the extent that Bing has achieved a record market share since its launch. Disclaimer: this campaign dates back to 2010
A prescription... of nature
In short — It's a proven fact: spending 20 minutes a day in nature has a positive impact on our mental health. So in the UK, WWF is launching a campaign called ‘A Prescription for Nature’ to remind people to take their daily dose of 20 minutes in nature. The campaign is available in 2 formats:
with a video featuring Dr Sara Kayat, the doctor on a popular ITV programme, in which we see her face cam' in her surgery prescribing this shot of nature, with the camera moving away and revealing... that she is in the middle of a forest ;
with posters of landscapes with, at the bottom, either prescriptions in the hand like a doctor, or the graphic codes of medicine boxes.
Why it matters — For the choice of prescription and medicine box, a format that is familiar to us to simply convey the message of a daily dose of nature. And because while WWF's primary mission is to protect and restore nature, the NGO wanted to show that nature could also help us restore ourselves and make us feel better, by reducing stress and anxiety. And if people reconnect with nature, they will be all the more inclined to change their behaviour to protect it.
Advertising hoardings replaced by works of art
In short — Since 2021, the town of Saint-Dizier has been organising the ‘Beauty will save the world’ operation. The idea was born during the Third Lockdown, when all the museums were closed and culture was inaccessible, in a gloomy context. So to avoid a collective depression, the mayor, Quentin Brière, decided that for 3 weeks his town would reserve all its billboards to ‘offer oases of beauty’ by replacing posters advertising SUVs or kitchens with works of art such as Klimt's The Kiss or Renoir's The Boaters' Lunch.
Why it matters — After 3 editions in Saint-Dizier, this year for the 1st time the operation is being offered nationwide to all towns that wish to take part, in partnership with the Grand Palais, which is making a selection of works of art available from 16 November to 8 December.
‘Don't go and see these horrors...’
In short — Two years ago, to promote its exhibition on the Middle Ages, the Musée de Cluny entered into a partnership with YouTube artist Manon Bril (709k subscribers), who specialises in history. The result was not only hilarious, but a huge hit (691k views, 43k likes).
Why it matters — Because it's a demonstration of what makes a partnership with a content creator successful: daring to give them carte blanche over the editorial and the proposed format. A cultural institution would never have gone down this route on its own, and yet that's the whole point for the Musée de Cluny: to have seen a completely different audience come to the exhibition after the video was published, explaining that they had discovered it thanks to Manon Bril.
The comedy with 6 possible endings in which you are the hero
In short — Last Thursday, Arte broadcast Les Burgers Volants on Twitch and YouTube, an interactive comedy filmed 100% live where viewers control the plot with six possible endings (that's 750 pages of script for the actors to learn (compared with 150 on average for a series for comparison), a job that took more than 2 years, accepting that most of what they learnt will not be performed...). The pitch? Two fast-food employee friends, Lou and Malik, dream of buying a food truck. But things don't go according to plan, with betrayals and revelations...
Why it matters — Because viewers were asked to vote throughout the evening, via polls on Twitch, taking full advantage of the platform's characteristic interactivity, not to find out ‘whether the characters are going to have a cup of tea or a coffee, but to make real psychological choices that will trigger this or that event’, explains Camille Duvelleroy, the director. The result is an atypical format, a fiction co-created live: while the community votes, the actors continue to act and are informed of the choices made by Internet users via an earpiece. ‘It's a cross between an audiovisual work, a live show and a video game’, says Fabien Giurgiu, the producer, who hopes it will be emulated.
→ Take a look at this unlikely format
Barbour's ephemeral tea room for the festive season
In short — To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its iconic quilted jacket, Barbour has teamed up with British department stores' chain Fenwick to offer “Tea & Toasties”, a tea room in its own image, until 31 December.
Why it matters — Firstly, because I really like the cosy atmosphere they've recreated in the pop up café, which is perfectly suited to Barbour, with attention to the smallest details (pastries using the brand's flagship motif, teapots in quilted covers, etc.). And above all, because I think that in reality all brands could do this exercise of imagining what THEIR pop up café would look like, because nothing is more effective than a physical experience to show its DNA.
What if... we were to imagine a visual search engine for our escapades, thanks to AI?
Because, let's face it, we often fall in love with a place just by looking at a few photos and choosing a guest house or hotel.
So why shouldn't platforms like Airbnb, Booking, Gites de France or even more specialised guides like Le Fooding or Iconic Houses allow travellers to describe what they're looking for (‘a tiny house to disconnect in the middle of the woods’, ‘a room with a sea view’, ‘a stone building with a fireplace for reading by the fire’...) and get a visual selection of places to choose from that match the mood they're looking for? As I'm passionate about guest houses, I launched Les Beaux Jours as a side project a few years ago with the idea of curating beautiful addresses.
... And sometimes I think the exact opposite! What if we dared to trust the written descriptions in Le Routard, without photos, with just the human stories behind the addresses that will make you want to go and discover them for yourself, without having been ‘spoilered’ beforehand, precisely to take the opposite view to Instagramming?
IT MAY BE A DETAIL FOR YOU, BUT...
📚 Book and Bed - In Tokyo, you can sleep... in the middle of a library. An atypical concept, part youth hostel, part bookshop, which looks terribly cosy.
⚓️ ‘Leave sceptical, return Celtic’ — Leave rinsed, come back refreshed... Brittany is launching a campaign (very successful in terms of copywriting) aimed at Parisians.
🧽 Reverse graffiti — Imagine a stencil and a karcher: you clean the pavement through the stencil, and presto, it's a free advert ... and one that no-one will be able to remove. Clever.
🤌 A short-lived restaurant for an album release — For his latest album, rapper SCH opened ‘Giulio’ near Bastille in May, a short-lived Italian restaurant where you can immerse yourself in the world of the Italian mafia, dropping off your phone at the entrance and eating cannelloni (a reference to a cult scene in The Godfather).
⛰️ Recto Verso takes you to Europe — Their boxed set was a big hit in France, so the Others team is duplicating it to bring you the 100 most beautiful hikes in Europe. I recommend you watch the video of Thomas, its co-founder: it's a textbook example of a perfect product launch - embodied, ‘authentic’ (like, really), clear and not boring. The landing page too - well constructed - is a good example.
🤪 Creating the FOMO of the future — It's not easy to have fun talking about the climate. But that's what Climax is doing with its campaign in railway stations, to combat the prevailing gloom with a series of ‘C'était mieux demain’ (‘It was better tomorrow’) recounting clever initiatives to combat climate change, using pop and funny visuals.
📷 ‘Without realising it, that's what you're doing by exposing your children on the internet’ — That's the pitch for the latest campaign by the charity Caméléon to raise awareness of the sharing of children's photos on social networks (without moralizing, but with absurdist humour).
📚 Le Monde launches its book club on Instagram — For the release of Sally Rooney's Intermezzo, the medium launched an Instagram channel to discuss the novel (3k members), with voice notes, reading goals and more.
💿 Julien Doré tricks journalists with a USB stick — Before the release of his new album ‘Imposteur’, the singer gave journalists a USB key promising them an exclusive preview. Except... not at all. Instead? Crazy amateur karaoke covers of the songs on the album.
👗 eBay organises the first second-hand Fashion Week — The concept? Fashion shows entitled ‘Endless Runway’ in London and NYC, with models dressed entirely in vintage pieces that Internet users can buy live.
That's all for today! See you on Tuesday 5th November for the next issue!
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