Rockwool France : Warming to social media

A quirky ad's initial impact is amplified.

The Site

Rockwool France, a supplier of building insulation materials, uses the web to spread a distinctive advertising campaign.

Rockwool France has a video click-through panel at bottom left of its home page showing a naked bearded man sat cross-legged in a designer chair and holding a coffee mug. Clicking on the panel launches a campaign site, Les aventures de Lars (‘The adventures of Lars’). This has a set of video ads featuring Lars (the naked man) extolling the calm frame of mind (‘La Lars attitude’) brought on by a home properly insulated against cold and noise.

Each video has options to share by e-mail (via an online form with up to five people at a time) or by ‘Blog’ (a link for viewers to embed a link in their own blog), and to copy the site’s URL. The videos are also posted individually on YouTube, the video sharing website.

The Takeaway

Rockwool France’s quirky advertising videos come as something of a surprise, to say the least, in the context of loft insulation and sound proofing. That, of course, is the intention – to attract attention and differentiate the company from its competitors in a not-quickly-forgotten way. But, as well as succeeding in that, the company is smart enough to see how the socialising of the web can help it amplify that exposure.

Creating a campaign site to showcase Lars’ adventures exploits the rapid advance of broadband connections and streaming video, but it is the ‘viral’ elements that add a turbo charge, encouraging anyone who has ‘discovered’ the ads to spread the word. While the ‘e-mail to friends’ option is fairly old-hat (but still effective), the blog link is unusual and the use of YouTube something that much larger – and ‘sexier’ – companies have yet to warm to.

First published on 18 June, 2009