Atelier Moet

Moet's idea to set up an Atelier where you can personalise bottles of their champagne with swarovski crystals is a good idea judging from the amount of coverage it is getting online and in newspapers.

Putting the tackiness of the idea to one side, this "innovation" has given people a reason both to buy Moet over its rivals, but more importantly has given people and jouranlists a reason to talk about Moet.

Here's GQ's piece:

"Champagne is always a welcome Christmas present, so the new Atelier Moët store may well be your best friend this festive season. Open from 3 to 28 December (so prime for New Year’s too), Moët & Chandon’s temporary pop-up store on London’s New Bond Street will customise your bottle of bubbly with the name, monogram or indeed date of your choice spelt out in Swarovski crystals. Opt to pay £50 for next-day delivery of a 75cl bottle, or £75 for while-you-wait, with larger sizes up to the 1,500cl Nebuchadnezzar also available. Gives a new meaning to the term “sparkling wine”."

You can see from the map below that this pop up promotion is running in several major cities around the world: Paris, London, Milan, Madrid, Macau and Singapore.



The US version of the Atelier is called My Moet which seems a lot less premium to me. But there you go. Also, because of the crazy booze regulations in the US you have to link out to distributor sites which are disgustingly off brand and lack any sense of class whatsoever. O well.



It's certainly bucking the anit-bling trend that seems to be taking over the world right now. But maybe we all need a bit of sparkle in our lives?

Customised Labels from Pernod Ricard

From the ever brilliant Springwise...

"The personalization trend shows no sign of abating, and companies far and wide continue to step up with ever-new ways to let consumers customize their tea, their cereal and their Fruit Roll-Ups—among many others. Now spirits maker Pernod Ricard has come up with an interesting twist on the idea by giving consumers the ability to order customized product labels alone.

Pernod Ricard's customized label program, which has actually been around for a few years, allows US residents (over 21, of course) to order personalized labels for Chivas Regal, The Glenlivet, Jacob's Creek, Kahlua, Mumm Napa and Wild Turkey Russell’s Reserve. What's interesting is that rather than offering custom label options as part of a larger product order for the drinks themselves, such as what myJones does, Pernod Ricard lets customers order just labels, and at no charge. An assortment of styles are available for each brand, including holiday, wedding and sailing themes, with room for up to seven lines of text. Consumers can then affix the labels over the original ones on bottles they obtained elsewhere; up to 5 labels can be ordered per e-mail address.

By separating the label offering from orders for the core product, Pernod Ricard achieves a number of desirable ends in one easy step. Not only does it reduce the associated shipping costs and broaden the audience that will be interested in engaging with the brand, it also gains the tremendous goodwill associated with giving away something for free. Free love is attractive enough, but when it's personalized? It doesn't get much better than that!"

Impressive to see this being rolled out across a range of brands rather than just the isolated use of personalisation by Johnnie Walker.

This Next Discovery Site

Who fancies having a personalised barware set as recommened by This Next members:



To buy any of the items click here.

The wider point of all this is that This Next is a brilliant site: it is a user generated, discovery social network where users share cool things they find. Whenever we make stuff/ooze to support our brands our aim should be to get it on this site.

Mini meets Minority Report

Hyper-personalisation meets, hyper localisation meets creativity.

See article from Marketing Week 1/2/07 below:

"Mini is launching a Minority Report-style campaign in the US which will have billboards flashing personalised messages to drivers as they pass by in their cars.

The boards, which usually carry traditional advertising messages, are programmed to identify approaching Mini drivers through a coded signal from a radio chip embedded in their key fob. The futuristic technology is similar to that featured in the 2002 film starring Tom Cruise.

The messages from the Mini billboards are personal and based on questionnaires that owners fill out. For example, the boards may say to a lawyer: 'Moving at the speed of justice' or 'The special of the day is speed' for a chef.

Mini is test-marketing the billboards in New York, Miami, Chicago and San Francisco. A spokeswoman for Mini UK says the company has ³no immediate plans² to run the campaign in the UK.

The US poster campaign is likely to face criticism from campaigners concerned at the growing number of digital billboards on roadsides throughout the country. But Mini¹s head of North American operations, James McDowell, says: "People buy Minis because they really want to have more fun in their days. We want everything about our marketing to fit that." It is thought the idea was first suggested to Mini by San Francisco advertising agency Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, which wanted to build on the already 'tribal' feeling among Mini owners.

The billboards will revert to showing standard Mini advertising after playing the personalised messages."

Awesome. It's about how not what.

Thanks to Claudia Simms for finding this!