Un article publié dans le International Herald Tribune le 23 décembre. En anglais of course. A la fin une référence au film du CNCT, "la discothèque", signé Yvan Attal. J'avoue que je m'interroge sur son efficacité au delà de la scène chaude du début et sur le slogan. Mais bon, je n'ai pas vu que les pouvoirs "publics" se soient fendus de la moindre campagne médiatique.
Altadis revels, in private, on the mystique of smoking - IHT
December 23, 2007
By Doreen Carvajal
PARIS: Only the select few can enter the online preserve of Altadis, the European tobacco giant. Inside, visitors find a parallel universe in which cigarette smoke takes the shape of a halo, willowy models strut down the runaway with cigarettes hanging from their pouty lips, and icons like Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt flaunt their smokes as symbols of rebellion.
Le Lab, an internal Web site at Altadis, is designed to be part social networking site, part data resource, part virtual pep rally. The target audience is several hundred Altadis brand managers who could use a little inspiration as cafés and restaurants around the world continue to shove users of its wares out the door.
The newest restrictions take effect Jan. 1, when France extends a nationwide ban on smoking in most public places to include bars, restaurants, nightclubs and the last hazy-blue bastion of French society: the café.
Instead of bemoaning its fate, Altadis - a hybrid of old state French and Spanish tobacco monopolies - has taken a cheeky approach to rally its troops as France has followed European smoking strongholds like Spain, Ireland, Italy and Sweden and parts of the United States that have enacted full or partial smoking bans.
The centerpiece of Le Lab is a series of 12 videos extolling the pleasures of smoking produced by the video artist Vincent Gagliostro, a transplanted New Yorker in Paris.
The edgy first introductory video cuts between a series of photos of celebrity smokers before posing a blunt question: "And your thoughts on the smoking ban?" A young woman with wispy blond hair gazes back solemnly toward the camera: "It's brilliant because people will stop smoking as a habit."
Seconds later, she appears again. "If you smoke," she added with a faint smile, pressing a cigarette to her lips, "it's for pleasure."
Another tracks the recent glamorization of smoking with images of models lighting up on the runway during a Jean-Paul Gaultier show during Paris Fashion Week in October.
Still to come are videos exploring "My First Time," in which smokers recall their first drag, and an ode to the art of lighting up, set, naturally to the Doors song "Light My Fire." Gagliostro said he was planning to interview nonsmokers and smokers to explore how the social ritual evolved as smokers shifted outdoors.
"I want the films to clarify and educate," Gagliostro said. "In some ways it's like reintroducing smoking and what I came up with is responsible smoking. Responsible smoking is about co-existing really. It's about dialogue between smokers and nonsmokers. Yes, there's a smoking ban coming, but these people are not evil or the devil."
The videos will be available only to employees with passwords through a live stream, an effort to thwart downloads that could end up on a video Web site like Dailymotion or YouTube.
The project is unique for a cigarette manufacturer, according to other tobacco companies. The leading cigarette maker, Philip Morris International, maintains its own internal Web sites, but has not attempted video. The British Tobacco Manufacturers' Association said that it has a campaign to advise pub owners on how to create outdoor shelters for smokers.
Altadis, which is the object of a takeover bid by Imperial Tobacco of Britain, sells several brands with a long history reflecting its national roots: Fortuna, closely associated with Spain, and Gauloises, which is so French that military conscripts used to collect part of their pay in packs of the cigarettes in the 1970s.
But today, smoking is a closely regulated market in France, with severe limits on promotions and outright bans on sports sponsorships and television, magazine and radio advertising. The only opportunity to market brands comes at the point of sale - the shelves and walls of about 30,000 tobacco shop owners in France who stack the cigarette packs in full view of their customers.
But even at this level, Altadis was reprimanded and assessed a total of €150,000, or $215,000, in fines and damages in November by a Paris court for illicit publicity. The court case followed a complaint by the CNCT, the National Committee Against Smoking, which faulted the company for giving out pens along with it packs of Royale Menthe Polaire and packaging its Fortuna Intenso brand with the words: "Discover Fortuna Intenso, a new sensation with spicy and intense accents." The court concluded that those words violated a state ban on promoting cigarette smoking, adding that it might lure people to try the brand because of its reference to spiciness.
In that kind of environment, Altadis does not have much room to maneuver on the topic of smoking, but it has that freedom within Le Lab, which is emblazoned with close-up photographs of tobacco leaves and finished cigarettes.
"The cigarette market is very difficult to work with all the legal restrictions and we have very few tools to communicate with our brands," said Karine Boure, the marketing manager for Altadis. "One objective of our project was to bring more insight to our marketing team so that they could be more effective, and we saw the lab as a way to pick up more ideas. That's why it's important to find innovative ways of working."
The videos, she said, were an entertaining way to provoke those ideas. When the site started in October, it was aimed at the French employees. But since then, its French developers, O7, have added another version in English, and the site has been opened to employees in other countries.
Jean-Christophe Nicolas, a partner in O7, a branding and communications agency, said his company was recruited in the summer to create what amounts to a private channel. The concept is continuing to evolve, with plans for a blog-style forum and the recruitment of a freelance writer to create a travel column about European cities.
"It will be something close to Facebook with social networking," he said. "They have a lot of communication nationwide, but they don't have much international communication and this will help them to share."
At the same time as Altadis is developing Le Lab, the antismoking group, CNCT, is preparing to run its own television advertisement that will begin airing on a leading French television station on Christmas Eve.
The CNCT has set its 30-second antismoking message in a Paris discothèque. The opening scene offers a glimpse of a couple making love in a toilet cubicle on a cigarette strewn floor. The warning, though, is not about safe sex, but the toxic effect of smoke lingering in the air hours after the party is over.
Nicolas Villain, co-director of the CNCT, said that he assumed Altadis was doing everything it could to motivate its employees because he said his organization sometimes got calls from disgruntled workers in the cigarette industry.
"Going forward, of course they want to keep their employees from being depressed and they want to tell them that smoking is a normal thing," he said.
Source: IHT
December 23, 2007
By Doreen Carvajal
PARIS: Only the select few can enter the online preserve of Altadis, the European tobacco giant. Inside, visitors find a parallel universe in which cigarette smoke takes the shape of a halo, willowy models strut down the runaway with cigarettes hanging from their pouty lips, and icons like Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt flaunt their smokes as symbols of rebellion.
Le Lab, an internal Web site at Altadis, is designed to be part social networking site, part data resource, part virtual pep rally. The target audience is several hundred Altadis brand managers who could use a little inspiration as cafés and restaurants around the world continue to shove users of its wares out the door.
The newest restrictions take effect Jan. 1, when France extends a nationwide ban on smoking in most public places to include bars, restaurants, nightclubs and the last hazy-blue bastion of French society: the café.
Instead of bemoaning its fate, Altadis - a hybrid of old state French and Spanish tobacco monopolies - has taken a cheeky approach to rally its troops as France has followed European smoking strongholds like Spain, Ireland, Italy and Sweden and parts of the United States that have enacted full or partial smoking bans.
The centerpiece of Le Lab is a series of 12 videos extolling the pleasures of smoking produced by the video artist Vincent Gagliostro, a transplanted New Yorker in Paris.
The edgy first introductory video cuts between a series of photos of celebrity smokers before posing a blunt question: "And your thoughts on the smoking ban?" A young woman with wispy blond hair gazes back solemnly toward the camera: "It's brilliant because people will stop smoking as a habit."
Seconds later, she appears again. "If you smoke," she added with a faint smile, pressing a cigarette to her lips, "it's for pleasure."
Another tracks the recent glamorization of smoking with images of models lighting up on the runway during a Jean-Paul Gaultier show during Paris Fashion Week in October.
Still to come are videos exploring "My First Time," in which smokers recall their first drag, and an ode to the art of lighting up, set, naturally to the Doors song "Light My Fire." Gagliostro said he was planning to interview nonsmokers and smokers to explore how the social ritual evolved as smokers shifted outdoors.
"I want the films to clarify and educate," Gagliostro said. "In some ways it's like reintroducing smoking and what I came up with is responsible smoking. Responsible smoking is about co-existing really. It's about dialogue between smokers and nonsmokers. Yes, there's a smoking ban coming, but these people are not evil or the devil."
The videos will be available only to employees with passwords through a live stream, an effort to thwart downloads that could end up on a video Web site like Dailymotion or YouTube.
The project is unique for a cigarette manufacturer, according to other tobacco companies. The leading cigarette maker, Philip Morris International, maintains its own internal Web sites, but has not attempted video. The British Tobacco Manufacturers' Association said that it has a campaign to advise pub owners on how to create outdoor shelters for smokers.
Altadis, which is the object of a takeover bid by Imperial Tobacco of Britain, sells several brands with a long history reflecting its national roots: Fortuna, closely associated with Spain, and Gauloises, which is so French that military conscripts used to collect part of their pay in packs of the cigarettes in the 1970s.
But today, smoking is a closely regulated market in France, with severe limits on promotions and outright bans on sports sponsorships and television, magazine and radio advertising. The only opportunity to market brands comes at the point of sale - the shelves and walls of about 30,000 tobacco shop owners in France who stack the cigarette packs in full view of their customers.
But even at this level, Altadis was reprimanded and assessed a total of €150,000, or $215,000, in fines and damages in November by a Paris court for illicit publicity. The court case followed a complaint by the CNCT, the National Committee Against Smoking, which faulted the company for giving out pens along with it packs of Royale Menthe Polaire and packaging its Fortuna Intenso brand with the words: "Discover Fortuna Intenso, a new sensation with spicy and intense accents." The court concluded that those words violated a state ban on promoting cigarette smoking, adding that it might lure people to try the brand because of its reference to spiciness.
In that kind of environment, Altadis does not have much room to maneuver on the topic of smoking, but it has that freedom within Le Lab, which is emblazoned with close-up photographs of tobacco leaves and finished cigarettes.
"The cigarette market is very difficult to work with all the legal restrictions and we have very few tools to communicate with our brands," said Karine Boure, the marketing manager for Altadis. "One objective of our project was to bring more insight to our marketing team so that they could be more effective, and we saw the lab as a way to pick up more ideas. That's why it's important to find innovative ways of working."
The videos, she said, were an entertaining way to provoke those ideas. When the site started in October, it was aimed at the French employees. But since then, its French developers, O7, have added another version in English, and the site has been opened to employees in other countries.
Jean-Christophe Nicolas, a partner in O7, a branding and communications agency, said his company was recruited in the summer to create what amounts to a private channel. The concept is continuing to evolve, with plans for a blog-style forum and the recruitment of a freelance writer to create a travel column about European cities.
"It will be something close to Facebook with social networking," he said. "They have a lot of communication nationwide, but they don't have much international communication and this will help them to share."
At the same time as Altadis is developing Le Lab, the antismoking group, CNCT, is preparing to run its own television advertisement that will begin airing on a leading French television station on Christmas Eve.
The CNCT has set its 30-second antismoking message in a Paris discothèque. The opening scene offers a glimpse of a couple making love in a toilet cubicle on a cigarette strewn floor. The warning, though, is not about safe sex, but the toxic effect of smoke lingering in the air hours after the party is over.
Nicolas Villain, co-director of the CNCT, said that he assumed Altadis was doing everything it could to motivate its employees because he said his organization sometimes got calls from disgruntled workers in the cigarette industry.
"Going forward, of course they want to keep their employees from being depressed and they want to tell them that smoking is a normal thing," he said.
Source: IHT
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