The brief

Build a community

To support the 2018 launch of their product line “Les Danone du Monde” (“Danone of the world”), Danone wanted to create a community of people passionate about the discovery of cultures and travel. Their goal was to go beyond a punctual marketing campaign and create an authentic, long-term experience driven by the the values inherent to their new brand: openness to the other culture, exchange, and social gathering.

Our insight

Create a service with high added value, in a third place

During our exploration phase at the beginning of the project we focused on understanding how communities evolve. This was a vital step as it helped us identify the crucial elements needed in order to reach a maximum of people in a meaningful way: we understood that we needed to stay true to the brand and its values, and we needed to do this in a fully transparent way.

In addition, staying true to our own DNA as Possible Future meant that our goal was to create a service that was economically viable. This is why, all along this project, we identified the most relevant business models that would actually allow to make the project sustainable for Danone.

The result

Atlas, la Cantine du Monde !

After 2 months of exploration and ideation, we pitched the “canteen of the world” (La Cantine du Monde in French) to Danone. We imagined a “canteen”, a physical space, in the heart of Paris – to gather people who share a passion for the discovery of new cultures, for travel, but also for events, theme-based dinners and cooking classes. In this space visitors would also find the “Danone du Monde” yoghurts. However, these products were not not the center of attention, but rather a vector to carry our message.

We first launched a prototype of the canteen during december 2017, to confirm our hypotheses and to clarify of positioning of our brand as well as the types of events we were going to host. After this first test Danone decided to take the project forward – and gave us the green light for a 6 months adventure during which we operated La Cantine du Monde, in rue Notre Dame de Nazareth in Paris.

The experience we created has been focused both on our offline and online presence, driven through our facebook page and our instagram. Thanks to these social networks, the canteen was able to maximise its resonance and reach an audience of more than 250K users.

During these 6 months we collaborated with the startup Meet My Mama who turned out to be an ideal partner – both in their business activity (catering service for our weekly dinners, highlighting a different country every time) and how they are in perfect value alignment with Danone.

Thanks to Meet My Mama the “Canteen of the World” was able to enter the next phase: We handed over management of the space to them so that they can continue their adventure with Danone – and maybe replicate the model in other places in France!