In 2001, as marketing director of the SBM in Monaco, Bruno Mercadal took the initiative of an international online communication campaign that broke with the customs of his profession, producing an animated cartoon to promote the seminar business in the mythical setting of the Société des Bains de Mer.
He looks back on this operation, which consisted in producing an animated cartoon in French and English (see the dedicated page), forming the heart of a vast e-mail marketing operation. The objective: to reach an audience accustomed to top-of-the-range communication, while seeking to surprise and seduce. The results of the film produced by 3TOON, in terms of click-through and conversion rates, would attest to the success of the campaign, which served for years as a B2B sales tool for the SBM’s sales forces.
In 2014, Bruno Mercadal kindly granted us an interview in which he details his expectations at the time, and a full assessment of this innovative viral marketing operation.
Transcript of the interview with Bruno Mercadal
“ In communication, I believe the main criterion for choosing a provider is talent. You can do things that stay within the norm — it won’t achieve much… But when you really want to surprise, to hold the attention of an Internet user or a client for the duration of a video, I believe you need that extra talent, whether in the idea or in the execution. There you have it: I believe in talent! ”
When did you contact the 3TOON studio?
Bruno Mercadal: I contacted 3TOON 10 years ago — maybe even 11… At the time, I was marketing director of the Société des Bains de Mer in Monaco, and it was in that capacity that I had the pleasure of working with 3TOON.
What challenge or problem were you facing before contacting 3TOON?
B M: Our challenge at the Société des Bains de Mer, at the time, was to develop the “seminars” business. The arrival of the Web had considerably shaken up the modes of communication we were used to, so we seized the opportunity of the new technologies — the Web in particular, including Flash — to put in place another way of communicating: more playful, more modern, and better suited to the clientele we wanted to reach. And by the greatest of coincidences, while we were partners of the company FastBooking, I met the 3TOON team in their offices, and we were won over by what we saw — something playful, and at the same time precise and rigorous!
What results were you hoping for?
The Société des Bains de Mer is a company steeped in history, a mythical company, so taking risks with the communication of such a company is no trivial matter… The results we hoped for, of course, were to surprise — without shocking, obviously! — a clientele accustomed to the very highest level of hotel service, not necessarily a clientele receptive to things that are too offbeat. And I must say that our will to modernise our message was very well received by our partners and, whether in the number of views or in the feedback we received after our clients watched the cartoon, I believe that for the whole marketing department it was a great success, a great satisfaction — and for the operational management of the Société des Bains de Mer at the time as well.
What results did you get in the end?
I must say that at every stage, what we produced with 3TOON met our expectations. First technically: at the first screening of the cartoon, held for all the marketing managers and the SBM’s director of operations, there was not a single technical problem. Flawless production quality! More than 10 years ago, you could have expected stutters, bugs or crashes… There were none. And on the client side, the number of views achieved at the time was very high. That too, I believe, is a token of good execution, of quality, and of satisfaction for those who made it.
What lessons do you draw from this experience?
What is interesting about videos, too, is their lifespan. Of course, you use them in web-marketing campaigns — that is, sending them by e-mail — but afterwards, you can make them available on the company’s website. And I believe the Société des Bains de Mer, for example, years later, was still using the video produced by 3TOON on its page dedicated to seminars…
Watch below the episode produced for the SBM of Monaco
SBM – Monte Carlo Meeting website:
