Sandrine Plasseraud

Ford Fiesta "This is Now"

Right, so, as I was saying yesterday, we've been pretty busy at We Are Social over the last few weeks and there is a good reason for it... We've been working on a very exciting social media campaign for the launch of the Ford Fiesta in Europe.

This is Now is a unique European collaborative art project, in which the public are invited to co-create an unparalleled collection of images that capture the essence of 'now'. The project's four stages are:

1. Noah Harris, acclaimed stop motion animation artist has commissioned a series of pieces from some of Europe's most promising young artists to produce the TV ad.

2. Art students across Europe were asked to submit works that depicted their own interpretation of 'now'.

3. The public are now invited to submit their own interpretations of 'now' to the This is Now Flickr group.

4. Launching in October, the Fiesta content portal will enable visitors to browse the project's entire collection of images, create a unique mash up that defines 'now' for them and share it with the world.

In the next few weeks we will offer you the chance to be guest-curator of the blog This is Now and have a chance to share your own unique interpretation of now with a wider audience. Let us know if you're interested !

Further links:

Facebook page This is Now

Twitter This is Now

The agencies involved in the project are:

• Ogilvy: TV & Print work
• Wunderman: Digital & DM
• MindShare: Media planning & buying
• Burrows: Brochure & POS
• We Are Social: Social media strategy and execution, including the project blog

Week #39

The last few weeks have been so busy that I'm still not sure how I survived ;-) So here is a recap of week #39 :

• Monday turned out to be the day that Piers Fawkes, Founder and CEO of PSFK, was not only in town but was also organising for some drinks in Soho (Twitter is such a brilliant tool to find such info !). So yes, met Piers (I'm a huge fan of PSFK!), but also met Anjali, Amanda (@amandita) and a few other people...

• Tuesday night I finally managed to leave the office to meet Robert McIntosh (@thirstforwine) who had organised a bloggers wine tasting sessions with 2 nice guys from the Spanish wine industry (they use Twitter ! Check out @casavides). I'm glad I made it to Barcelona Tapas in Lime Street - discovered a few interesting stories about wine, drank some rosé for the first time in 10 years and like it, and found out about a Spanish drink called Sherry (loved it !). 

• Wednesday was supposed to be my "night off", ie the one I just crashed onto my sofa, away from the Social Media scene. Well, that was before we found out Loic Le Meur was in London... This last minute meetup at The Coach & Horses in Soho (why this place ?!) was pretty cool. Met quite a few people (including @solobasssteve @builtbydave @LloydDavis) and ended up doing a Seesmic video promoting the Twestival for @amandita ;-)

• Thursday ? Twestival of course ! 200 people from the Twitter community met up in a club off Trafalgar Square. A very very good night indeed (most of the social media industry was struggling on Friday am though lol). The event was even mentioned on the official Twitter blog and there are now talks about a Xmas Twestival, which would be fab ! If you couldn't make it on Thursday, pictures from the event are available on Flickr # Twestival. But if you missed out on the Twestival, you obviously also missed out on Ben Walker live performance of the "Twitter Song" ?! I save it for the end of my post - see below...

• Friday night, the Internet Minibar was taking place at Corbet Place. Stayed there for a few drinks with my colleague @peterparkes

Guess what I did on Saturday night ? I'll buy a beer to the first one who finds out!

ps: see the French translation of the Twitter Song here !

The Dexter HitList !

I can't believe I hadn't heard about this Dexter viral until yesterday (it's been around since July !)

It's very much alike the 2006 Glue viral for the Mini Cooper RS but it's still very much enjoyable to see this kind of highly personalised content.

Here is the video I sent to myself (not that I don't have any friends... it's just that I needed to post the viral onto my blog ;-)

Have a go at adding your friends to the Dexter HitList !

Agency: Ralph and co

When brands listen to you on Twitter

Simple yet so surprising and effective: a couple of nights ago, I was complaining on Twitter about Technorati being down just when I was supposed to finish a client presentation using Technorati authority figures. I wasn't expecting anything from it. It was just a space for me to moan ;-).

But then 10 minutes or so later I received this Tweet:

Simple but very effective: the brand was listening to me ! Pretty amazing !!!

In reality, it's very easy to do: you monitor the conversations on Twitter and you get someone to respond whenever it's necessary. But so few brands do it that it's very surprising to be listened to and it feels great ;-)

Viral marketing for dummies ;-)

Very funny !

Twitter + Club Med = a match made in heaven

As I was surfing from one blogroll to another today, I came accross a brilliant campaign for the French holiday operator Club Med. As far as I'm concerned, it's THE campaign of 2008 !!!

For those of you who don't know about Club Med, it's an all-inclusive upmarket holiday package: tranport, accomodation, food, sports and activities non-stop 24 hours a day*. So basically, from the moment you wake up to the end of the night -or early morning :-), you never stop: aquagym, swimming, snorkelling, foam party (don't ask !), water party (don't ask either !), waterskying, wakeboarding, windsurfing, climbing, danse lessons, tennis, gym, archery, apéritif (lol), diner and drinks (lol), night-club (and drinks)...

I have been going to the Club Med Freestyle in Kemer and Djerba for over 5 years now and whenever my friends and I come back from the Club, we kind of suffer "withdrawal" from dancing around the pool / behaving like crazy teenagers at the foam party / water party or while dancing the "crazy signs" and basically we send each other emails at noon reminding each other it's time for going dancing round the pool ;o)

This year I went along to the club with 5 bloggers and we spent a considerable amount of time, before and after the holidays, "twitting" non-stop about the pool parties, the foam parties, etc...

So when I found out this great campaign I almost felt sorry I wasn't the one able to "Twitt" during my holidays ! Club Med invited a couple of bloggers to holiday in Chamonix at the beginning of the year, and the bloggers were twitting live from their holidays, with the "Twitts" being displayed live on online banners for the Club Med ! How great and innovative is this ?!

You can read more about the campaign on Caroline's blog and Adele's blog.

Raph, partant pour du live twitting de Kemer l'an prochain ? ;-)

* that's for those of you who pick up the "Freestyle" clubs - there are lots of peaceful and relaxing Club Med holidays !

When did we start trusting strangers...

... another great study by Universal Mc Cann, on the rise of social media, digital friends and the influence economy.

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: internet international)

via Andrea

EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment

A quick and colourful post, perfect for my post-holiday mood ;-)

Not as good as the Diet Coke + Mentos but still, very enjoyable to watch !

Nils is waiting for the new Ikea catalog

I have been meaning to write a post about this Ikea viral ages ago so here it is finally !

The site "warte bis september" ie "waiting until September was launched on the 21st of August. So what is it all about ? Nils, a young German has been broadcasted live on the Internet since the 21st of August, while living in an empty flat and waiting for the new Ikea catalog to come out in September...

Visitors could vote for the furniture he should pick for his flat. Have a look at the live video embedded below, it feels very real ! At the time I'm writing this post, Nils is getting some furniture delivered and built by some Ikea staff...

Warte bis septembre

Nils' channel on YouTube

Just Do It !

I was really excited when I joined Nike+ "Team World" a couple of months ago: a team of 22 Londoners who originally come from one of the Nike+ Human Race participating countries. A real mix of culture and people from all over the world: Australia, Germany, China, UK, France, Mexico, Peru, Argentina and many more.

I was a little bit less excited when I sprained my ankle and struggled to simply walk...

I was really less excited when I found out I was being evicted because my landlord was no longer paying his mortgage, which meant finding another place to live didn't live me much time to train...

So needless to say, yesterday, at the Nike+ Human Race starting point, I was not as prepared as I wished...

But then the excitement of the race got me. 17,000 people wearing a red t-shirt in the Wembley arena, that's pretty awesome. Thousands of red t-shirt running together under the rain in North London, that's so much more overwhelming than some of the races I have done in the past where, yes there is a crowd, but you do not feel this "unity" that I felt yesterday, just because everyone was in red. A small detail but an important one ! Check it out for yourself with the videos I made on Qik

So this is it, it's over. I managed to achieve my goal which was to run the 10k under 58min (don't ask me why, my friend Marie-Anne set up the challenge for me !).

I have met a whole bunch of very nice people thanks to this Team World initiative from Nike. We'll have to catch up around some chineese dim sum as discussed or a BBQ. Also a big thank you to Simon W. from Nike for organising this and being patient with all of us.

And, a final thank you to my friend Victor who also ran the race, but in Paris and who was nice enough to send me a 10k music track without which I'm not sure I would have ran as fast. Thanks Victor !