CASE STUDY: French robots battle it out at Shanghai Expo

Background

Showcasing robots is fiercely competitive at the Expo and the agency faced stiff competition from countries such as Japan, who are more naturally associated with technology. Also, many robots at the Expo were also demonstrating advanced tasks so the heat was really on.

Aim

A total of 20 Nao robots would be performing a synchronized dance and the agency was asked to attract national and global awareness via traditional and social media.

Execution

The agency invited media to an exclusive preview of the robots dancing and used this to implement a viral campaign ahead of the launch, which created a huge amount of noise in the social media space.

They briefed media ahead of the actual public launch and gave photographers key images in advance to illustrate both Music Day and France National Pavilion Day at the Expo, which is when the first public appearance of the dancing Naos was scheduled for.

The agency also used the robots' ability to play football and the coinciding RoboCup (a football competition for robots) to piggy back on France's dismal performance at the World Cup in order to further raise its profile.

Results

The viral of the robots dancing was immediately posted on video-sharing websites like YouTube, Youku and 56.com and re-posted on other video sharing and blog sites and tallied up well over 500,000 views in the first 2 weeks alone.

The agency kept this momentum going by engaging with bloggers and online influencers who had commented on Nao or dubbed the video with other music.

One blogger even dubbed the viral with Beyonce's 'single ladie' which generated further interest. This saw the video spread online - for example, the video was re-posted on key Blogsite Engadget in nine languages.

The social media approach was integrated with a traditional PR strategy that saw coverage appear on sites for national and international publications such as Handelsblatt, Time magazine and the Daily Telegraph.

Credits:

Project Nao Robots at Shanghai World Expo 2010
Client Aldebaran Robotics
Public relations agency MS&LGroup
General manager Antoine Bourdeix & Harriet Gaywood in Shanghai / Stanislas Magniant in Paris
Account executives Felisa Feng, Angela Chen, Owen Wang, Arnaud Pichat, Rémi Barra