When brands make that step to be more social and decide to let go of control, we should applaud that. Sometimes we tend not to notice this, and focus just on those brands (still the most) that don’t get it at all.
Club Med is making a first step to engage with the community and in a very nice and smart way if you ask me. Interel – Club Med’s PR agency – worked with Caroline ‘Rolling Talks’ Maerten and Adhese for this first campaign. They asked blogger/photographer Ine if she was interested in going to Chamonix to one of the Club Med Villages. Nothing extraordinary here, but the nicest part of all this is that a special banner (developed by Adhese) is showing the latest updates of this trip tapping into Ine’s Twitter and Flickr stream. These banners are shown on a selection of Belgian’s most important blogs.
Here are 2 screenshots of that banner:
I don’t know about you but I think that Club Med has made a very smart move here. And the choice of Ine as the blogger to be invited is a very important part of this smart move.
Congrats to Caroline for setting it up with the agency and for Adhese to keep innovating, also within the banner.
'Cross The Breeze 
It’s great to see some innovation in banner advertising! Also the concept of combining an ad directly with a live testimonial is quite unique. But we’ve to ask ourselves whether a sponsored blogger is still trustworthy when being sponsored? As some advertisers are experimenting with sponsored posts in the Belgian blogosphere at this moment this is an interesting topic.
@ Kris : thanks for mentioning us!
@Bart : we’ll have a talk about that soon :-)
cu
@Bart: For me the live part is especially cool because it shows Club Med letting go of control, more than just using the banner in a new way. I do agree we should ask the question about bloggers still being trustworthy, but in this case I think it’s ok… since it’s Ine. I mentioned in my post that I think choosing Ine was part of the smart move they made. Reason for that being that most of us know Ine and know her integrity as well. I do believe she might exaggerate a bit in the way she likes this Club Med trip (fair enough) but I strongly believe she won’t lie about anything. Still, you made a good point.
Thanks Kris. I feel deeply concerned by the ‘letting go of control’ you mentioned. Letting go is something very unusual for a lot of us, often linked to deep unconscious beliefs. Its often not easy to do at a personal level, let alone for a brand which identity is spread and conveyed by multiple human beings. I believe though that if you step willingly into the ‘let it go’ behaviour, you’ll find there’s no mistake, only experience. I’m learning everyday, with good and less good ones. One thing I’ve learned from this action: there’re so many interactions linked to human perceptions, its impossible to believe you’ll control everything (let alone think about everything). So I guess the only way to manage it wisely is definitely to learn to let it go :-)