Winners & Shortlists

THE MORE THE MERRIER

TitleTHE MORE THE MERRIER
BrandPUBLICIS GROUPE
Product/ServicePUBLICIS GROUPE WISHES 2014
Category C01. USE OF DIGITAL IN A PR CAMPAIGN
Entrant Company DIGITASLBI FRANCE Paris, FRANCE
Advertising Agency DIGITASLBI FRANCE Paris, FRANCE
Credits
Name Company Position
Thierry Delesalle Prodigious Producer
François Nemeta Prodigious Director
Charlène Plozner Prodigious Production Officer
Bridget Jung Digitaslbi Paris Chief Creative Director
Jeremy Vissio Digitaslbi Paris Motion Designer
Patrick Sigwalt Music
Peggy Nahmany Publicis Groupe Vp/Communications Director
Sabrina Pittea Publicis Groupe Communications Officer
Lindsay Mccallum Publicis Groupe Communications Officer
Nicolas Thiboutot Digitaslbi Paris Creative Director
Philippe Pinel Digitaslbi Paris Creative
Frederick Lung Digitaslbi Paris Creative
Chisato Tsuchiya Digitaslbi Paris Art Director
Amelie Cruchet Digitaslbi Paris Communication Officer
Alexandre Gallais Digitaslbi Paris Project Manager
Brice D'annoville Digitaslbi France Creative Technology Production Manager
Philippe Bordachar Digitaslbi Paris Creative Technology
Loup Rodolphe Thibault Digitaslbi France Creative Technologist Coder
Julien Terraz Digitaslbi France Creative Technologist
Damien Pitard Digitaslbi France Creative Coder

The Campaign

The Publicis Omnicom merger had always been discussed in a financial way. We used Maurice Lévy’s 2014 internal greeting to start talking about it in a very human way. The More the Merrier. The more people that join in during the video, the merrier it becomes. The webcam can count how many people are watching: on your own, you’ll only see a corporate speech, but if you gather some friends, you’ll see Maurice Lévy trying to keep his cool delivering his speech surrounded by a confetti storm, cheerleaders or even Chinese dragons…

The Brief

The merger had always been discussed in a financial way. Our goal was to humanise it and demonstrate that Publicis Groupe is, and will remain, an innovative group of individuals. We did it through the voice of its leader Maurice Levy with an innovative video that brought co-workers physically together at Christmas time.

Results

Within a month, the experience had over-performed against set objectives: - More than 110000 times (which is great for a group with 59000 employees). - Average time spent on the video approx. 00:03:49 - More than 2828034 impressions on Facebook and Twitter and more than 2832 interactions. - Worldwide media coverage in France, UK, USA, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, South-America, Asia-Pacific and Australia... (more than 200 clippings). -But most importantly, we managed to get a digital greeting to bring Publicis Groupe co-workers physically together at Christmas time. The ultimate KPI was that employees volunteered to spread the word via their own social media accounts. We surprised them with a "group selfie" that had been taken by the webcam...And 85% of participants shared it on facebook or twitter. But most importantly, we managed to get a digital greeting to bring Publicis Groupe co-workers physically together at Christmas time.

Execution

Every year Maurice Levy addresses his greeting to the employees of the Group through a Youtube video. Since we believe tradition doesn’t prevent innovation, we set out to do something new in this well known media (YouTube). We realised that the employees themselves would be the best social currency to spread the word. To their surprise, at the end of the experience, we gave them a "group selfie" that had been taken by the webcam during the video. Employees then shared this photo on their own personal social networks, making it not only a success with Publicis Groupe but also externally.

The Situation

Our biggest PR challenge with this digital greeting was to inspire employees with optimism and excitement about belonging to this big Group, that was only going to get bigger in 2014. We needed to show a more human dimension to Publicis Groupe and engage employees on a personal level showing them that as we grow, it's just a case of "The More, The Merrier".

The Strategy

Over the years Maurice Levy’s greeting message has become quite a rendez-vous between the CEO and his employees at christmas time. Like any well-mannered person, Maurice Levy is never late to meetings, so we launched the video 3 weeks before christmas making sure that employees could watch the greeting before heading off on holiday.