Marcel's Souvenir Stunt Turns Centre Pompidou Into Top Tourism Spot

When you think of Paris, what are the must-see tourist attractions that spring to mind? The Eiffel Tower? The Arc de Triomphe? The Louvre? The Sacré Coeur?

A name that probably wasn't on your list is the Centre Pompidou, a strikingly designed gallery located in the heart of the city which is home to one of the largest modern and contemporary art collections in the world. 

Although it's popular among residents - Parisians flock to the Centre in their thousands, with many paying repeat visits - international tourists seem mostly unaware of the Centre's existence, preferring to head to the same old destinations. As a result, they are missing out on a collection that rivals the MoMA in New York, or the Tate Modern in London. 

To raise the Centre's international profile, and make it an essential stop on tourists' itineraries, Marcel looked into what the most-visited Parisian landmarks have in common. The answer? They're all immortalised in the form of those little statues and keyrings that are the mainstay of tourist tat (cough) memorabilia stands.

So, to join the club, Marcel created its own statuettes of the Pompidou Centre and flooded the city with them, placing them in existing kiosks and stores across Paris. They also hired in a squad of bilingual, art-savvy street merchants to flog the product and promote the Centre in front of better-known monuments. In the case study video [top] you can see one smooth talker insisting that the Pompidou is one of the "Big Five" destinations which includes the Sacré Coeur, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.

The street-sellers also waxed lyrical to passersby about the unique 'inside-out' design of the building - which makes a feature of functional fixtures and fittings, like stairs and pipes, which are usually hidden away, by placing them on the exterior - and the range of artworks on display inside, from Chagall to Kandinsky. 

In order to get people to the Centre as smoothly as possible, the statuettes came complete with QR codes on their bases, which offered Google Map directions to the gallery, no matter where people were in the city. And for the truly lazy, there was the option to hop aboard a free shuttle bus.