november-2010

BUSINESS
Businesstrends
Drink and drive social change
German brand launches beverages with a conscience
‘Drinking helps!’ This is the slogan of Hamburg-based company LemonAid Beverages,
which aims to use its funkily packaged bottled drinks to help effect social change across
several countries. The brand’s fresh organic juice, for example, comes from a small farming
cooperative in Brazil called Coagrosol, while its sugar cane is derived from a Paraguay
cooperative called La Felsina. Not only does LemonAid pay its suppliers higher prices on
account of its fair-trade practices, but it also donates a major share of its yearly revenue
to further support grassroots projects in the developing world. Specifically, for every bottle
of LemonAid sold, a percentage of the proceeds is donated back to the countries from which
its ingredients derive.
The company says it isn’t trying to target the usual health food shop client, and so far
LemonAid has been sold in trendy bars and stores throughout Germany, Sweden, Denmark,
Austria and Switzerland. “Just in case you were wondering: no, we’re not going to sell it off
to Coke one day,” adds the LemonAid website.
Saucy Smints
Breath mint company appeals to customers’ naughty side
Smint has taken away the breath of many a Spanish customer with a six-month campaign
offering ‘sensual’ products in exchange for points. A code is printed on each box of mints;
consumers then register on the Smint Me Hot website, enter their code and points are added
to their account – which can be redeemed on a selection of adult toys, including a vibrator.
Smint’s parent company, Barcelona-based Chupa Chups, raised eyebrows a year ago when
the Moscow-based creative agency Firma posted three adult interpretations
of the famous lollipops online – BDSM, Fetish and Toys. The products have
not yet gone into production. But the Spanish aren’t exactly known to be coy
when it comes to marketing campaigns. To celebrate this year’s Madrid Pride
parade in July, Fiat customised a number of its 500 models in various outfits,
including the ‘Drag’, with feathers and sequined lycra, and the ‘Leather’,
adorned with straps and studs. They can’t compete with the Germans,
however. In the same month, Mini Cooper launched a campaign in Hamburg
featuring the slogan, ‘A good Mini takes you to heaven. A bad Mini takes you
everywhere’. In the Reeperbahn, a billboard featured the rear of a Mini and an
S&M whip. The billboard gave out a five-digit number and Getting fresh:
code word; upon texting the word to the number, the whip Smint launched a
raunchy marketing
would strike the Mini, which would then sound its horn… campaign in Spain
64 Brussels Airlines b.there! magazine November 2010
Improving the
world can be
thirsty work…
IMAGE ALAMY
Video victory
YouTube fends off breach of copyright
claim by Spanish television channel
Judges in Madrid have ruled that YouTube
did not violate a TV channel’s copyright
by hosting shows uploaded by users – a
verdict hailed by the site’s owner Google
as “a clear victory for the internet” following
a long-running dispute.
The case centres on the private TV
channel Telecinco, which claimed that
the online video platform was in breach
of its intellectual property rights by
rebroadcasting its content. In 2008 another
Spanish court ruled in favour of the TV
channel, ordering YouTube to suspend the
Fair game? It is
“impossible” for YouTube
to monitor all uploads
videos, but the new verdict recognised the
difficulties the site has with deleting content
that violates copyright laws. It noted that
it is “physically impossible to control all the
videos that are made available to users,
as there are in fact more than 500 million.”
Any user can put videos on the site, with an
estimated 24 hours of content uploaded
each minute. Had the court ruled in favour
of Telecinco, YouTube could have been
forced to implement much stricter rules
on uploading, including monitoring all
content uploaded to the site.
Responding to the verdict, Google said:
“This decision reaffirms European law, which
recognises that content owners (not service
providers such as YouTube) are in the best
position to know whether a specific work
is authorised to be on an internet hosting
service.” It added that if internet sites had
to screen all videos, photos and text before
allowing them, many popular sites, including
Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, would
simply grind to a halt.