How Alasoop Uses MailChimp to Help Local Restaurants

MailChimp is an e-mail marketing service provider that makes managing e-mail campaigns very simple. Where services like Constant Contact charge a flat monthly fee that increases with the size of your mailing list, MailChimp charges a very low fee per e-mail sent.

On MailChimp’s site there is a great case study about how Webstellung (a small communications business) in Paris is using MailChimp’s e-mail marketing tools to help local restaurants market themselves.

They created a service whereby they get lunchtime restaurant patrons to sign up to receive via e-mail the daily menus of local restaurants who provide a high-quality but reasonably priced lunch. The service (branded " Alasoop", a tongue-in- cheek phonetic rendition of French for "Dinner's on the table") helps office workers find out about restaurants they may not have tried and let’s them know what’s on special today. It also helps restaurants – none of which have anything like an advertising budget -- find new customers, and to fill their restaurants every lunchtime.

Apparently the restaurants currently piloting the service are receiving increased business and increased repeat business. There is a coupon program built in to the e-mails to provide a little incentive, and it seems there is very little unsubscribing in the mailing lists.

You can read the full case study here on
MailChimp’s site.

Jeep's Comic Book Competition Seeks Consumer Buzz

In an attempt be more appealing to a younger more environment-conscious consumer, DaimlerChrysler have systematically been rolling out smaller and smaller models in their Jeep range over the past few years. Their latest and cheapest model, the Jeep Patriot, is using some web 2.0 thinking to generate buzz: DaimlerChrysler are asking fans to create a comic book that features the car, if not as the hero, as a key character in the storyline. How’s that for leveraging user generated content?




Together with Marvel Comics, of Spider-Man and X-Men fame, Jeep is inviting budding comic authors to enter “The Patriot Factor” competition and submit story lines for the pending comic book. Marvel’s artists have jump-started the project, posting the first few pages at PatriotAdventure.com

Jeep’s ad agency, Organic, believes that the consumer-generated content approach will help them get exposure in their target demographic which is younger, male, first-time car buyers. They are also pushing the Patriot through social networks and video games, though there is as yet no mention of making it available in Second Life, the virtual world now so popular with marketers. (GM’s Pontiac, Toyota’s Scion, and Nissan’s Sentra have been selling virtual cars there for some time).

The winning entries will get author credits in actual comic books to be drawn and published by Marvel later in the year.

Pepsi Goes Beyond 2.0

The Pepsi Generation is very much the web 2.0 generation, so it is appropriate that for 2007, Pepsi (through their agency Tribal DDB) is taking consumer online engagement and brand dynamism to a level not often seen.

Pepsi will be launching a new can/bottle design every three weeks, with each can design being themed to a consumer passion, and linked to a different online microsite that engages consumers in generating content around that theme. The dozen or so themes will include cars, music, fashion, entertainment and sports.



Pepsi’s first site was thisisthebeginning, which encouraged visitors to use a series of templated tools to collectively design a Pepsi billboard. The winning design will become a real billboard that will appear in Times Square.



The next site, pepsifreeride.com, focuses on cars, where visitors can play an online driving game and enter a lottery to win a specially customised Subaru Impreza.



Future microsites will let visitors design their own Pepsi can, with the possibility of the winner’s can actually making it onto the market. Another site will let visitors use their computer keyboard to create music.

You can see all of the Pepsi can designs at pepsigallery.com.