Title	UMBRELLA
Brand	MUSÉE DE LA GRANDE GUERRE DU PAYS DE MEAUX
Product/Service	MUSÉE DE LA GRANDE GUERRE DU PAYS DE MEAUX
Category	A05. Use of Ambient Media: Small Scale
Entrant Company	DDB PARIS, FRANCE
Advertising Agency	DDB PARIS, FRANCE

Name	Company	Position
Alexandre Hervé	Ddb Paris	Executive Creative Director
Jean-françois Bouchet	Ddb Paris	Copywriter
Emmanuel Courteau	Ddb Paris	Art Director
Alice Labau	Ddb Paris	Art Director Assistant
Marlène Bertranine	Ddb Paris	Account Manager
Jean-luc Bravi	Ddb Paris	Account Director
Michel Rouger	Musée De La Grande Guerre Du Pays De Meaux	Advertiser Supervisor
Lyse Hautecoeur	Musée De La Grande Guerre Du Pays De Meaux	Advertiser Supervisor

Brief Explanation

The museum is young and 20 minutes away from Paris by train. It needs any advertisement you can give it. Especially in the area of Gare de l'Est train station, the one serving Meaux, where the museum is located. That is why we suggested them something different from a classic ad, and why we focused on this specific area of Gare de l'Est, the starting point of the museum's train line.

Results and Effectiveness

Thousands of hotel guests around Gare de l'Est have already been lent a free umbrella. The umbrella was quoted by tens of bloggers and journalists it had also been sent to. The number of visitors on location increased of nearly 5% during the month following the launch of the project. The umbrella is still available at the Museum's store: 35€. A reasonable price compared to the one paid by ten millions of soldiers, who never made it back home.

Creative Execution

France has not endured war on its own territory for nearly half a century. We wanted to make people realize how lucky they were to live in 2014 and not a century before. So we thought about something very common, an item used on an everyday basis: an umbrella. With a surprise inside: a panoramic WW1 landscape. Perfectly in line with the baseline we launched in 2012: 'Experience what nobody should have ever experienced'. In December 2014, we made a deal with some hotel chains around Gare de l'Est train station: we furnished them some umbrellas they could lend for free to their guests. Sober objects on the outside, but quite astonishing inside.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

As we said, the museum is young (it was created in 2011). Its audience is mainly the Paris and vicinity population, or tourists who come into the French capital. But our main target was made of the people staying at hotels in the area of Gare de l'Est, for the reasons explained above.