A tour to the future with CANAL+
From October 8th through October 11th, France's Canal+ "teleported" its viewers to the year 2050 by launching 'Un Tour Vers le Futur' (A Tour to the Future), a four-day themed programming event highlighting futuristic movies, series, and specially created original productions and interactive features depicting what the future might look like. Brands such as Seat and food-delivery service Deliveroo also hopped on board and helped shape the experiences.
Un Tour Vers le Futur by CANAL+ / CANAL+
Throughout the programming event Canal+ aired a number of dystopian and science fiction films such as "The Martian", "The Lobster" and "Ex Machina". Moreover, the channel's news and entertainment programs like "Le Gros Journal", "Le Petit Journal", "Action Discrète" or "Le Tube" joined in and adjusted their content to provide a glimpse at the future.
Et si vous passiez le week-end en 2050 avec nous ? Toute notre antenne fait un saut dans le temps dès ce samedi > https://t.co/QQc0Oau7xV pic.twitter.com/Lil6iHEa8w
— CANAL+ (@canalplus) October 7, 2016
Among the programming highlights was the elaborately produced edition of "Canal Football Club", which turned into "Futur Football Club" and depicted how football might evolve in the future: women playing in men teams, crowd funding operations, and hyper-modern stadiums thanks to technological development. The studio as well as the hosts all got a little make-over to look more futuristic.
During "Futur Football Club", the hosts also talked about the fictional match between PSC and Red Star F.C., a team currently playing in the second league. Since the episode was sponsored by Seat, the auto manufacturer was integrated into shown clips: the stadium was called 'Seat Stadium' and the players could be seen wearing sponsored jerseys.
To engage viewers in the digital space and help them navigate the programming schedule in a fun and futuristic way, Canal+ set up a special Facebook Messenger chat bot. The bot interacted with users by answering questions and humorously informing about life in the future. Users could even win a subscription for Canal+ until the year 2050.
As a part of the programming event, Canal+ also teamed up with food-delivery service Deliveroo and Thierry Marx, a French chef specialized in molecular gastronomy. Together they imagined what food might look like in the future. At futurefood.deliveroo.fr users had the chance to once again interact with a chat bot. This time, however, the bot gave viewers recommendations on what to eat in 2050. After having answered a number of questions about weather conditions and sleeping habits, the bot aka the chef recommended an extraordinary dish.
Matthias Puschmann is the Managing Director and Cofounder of VAST MEDIA, a media research and consulting company based in Berlin that provides international television industry leaders with qualitative competitive market analysis of digital entertainment and content marketing.
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