Applied Technology - Unit 2 Research and Communication

1. Applied Technology - Unit 2 Research and Communication “eBay c’est vous” Rose Hall

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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

5. Click stills below to have a taster of the adverts now airing on French television.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Direct Mail 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.

15. 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=|f7fa7e1d8aa720abd28fde84b2abbfd3|444&cs=|d8d5b42c07fb0c69f0d83f5f214ece0e would translate as http://tinyurl.com/2sok9o

16. Classified 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.

17. Ambient 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.

18. 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

19. Contacts and References Julia Thet - BETC EURO RSCG - julia.thet@betc.eurorscg.fr Philippe Brandt - BETC EURO RSCG - philippe.brandt@betc.eurorscg.fr 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 - charlie@charliechambers.co.uk