Kicking things off: Co-op’s new brand platform, titled “Owned by You. Right by You,” asks: If you invented a business today, how would it work? The ad, by VCCP, artfully answers the question by providing a dreamy stream of decisions you’d perhaps imagine were logical when businesses are “publicly owned” (except they’re not). In doing so, it basically distinguishes what makes a co-op different from a normal business.

“In the Food for Love” conveys its whole vibe in the title, but we still weren’t prepared for it. Created by Rosa Paris for U.K. grocery chain Grand Frais, it makes strategic use of classic pop music to convey the deep sense of relationship shoppers feel … not to each other, but to the supermarket. Inexplicably, the work makes us miss Grey Poupon.

“Before taking the road, one must learn to share it.” Try telling that to anybody who drives in a city! Škoda and DDB Paris are trying to solve a problem: Since Covid, when the Mayor of Paris installed a whiplash-inducing number of bike lanes, the road’s become unlivable as tensions between cyclists and cars rise. Both think they own the road. Both are jerks in their own special way.

Škoda is a major Tour de France partner, so it’s got both these warring tribes in its DNA. The agency and brand worked with the French Cycling Federation to do a simple thing that may be ingenious, but we won’t know for another 10 years: To train future owners of the road, they created the first-ever children’s playmat that includes bike lanes. The mat comes in a game box that includes a toy car, a toy bike (with a cyclist, natch) and a booklet you can read to your child, who of course will not listen.

Hey man!

To hype its  ë-C3 electric vehicles, Citroën channels some vintage David Bowie spirit with lavish costumes, face powder and the revved-up riffs of “Suffragette City.”

For the time-twisty, French Revolution-themed narrative, they wisely excluded the “Wham bam!” lyric near the track’s end. That bit hasn’t aged well.

The fresh work from BETC Paris and director Fredrik Bond feels akin to DB’s theatrically stylized videos of the early-MTV era. 

And they all kept their heads. Vive le roi! (And ROI, too.)

“The tension point we leaned into is that generally speaking, for a long period of time, affluent consumers were the ones to first be able to embrace electric mobility, we wanted to show that driving an EV is no longer just for the elite in the most cinematic way possible,” BETC senior creatives Matt Jones and Abi Stephenson tell Muse.

As for the song selection, “Bowie is a god,” they say. “We wanted a track with an undercurrent of rebellion and punk energy, to match the high-octane visuals on screen.”

A highlight from the shoot involved “seeing our creative director (Nick Bakshi) and designer (Anthony Tavares) as extras in the final moment where you see the rebels storming away with the cars with flares and flags. Don’t just write the ad, star in it!”

Citroën has long leveraged pop-culture to generate buzz and mass appeal. The carmaker’s Eiffel Tower installation (from 1925!) and films with Jean-Paul Goude and Grace Jones are the stuff of adland legend.

CREDITS

Ad Agency: BETC Paris
Chief Creative Officer: Stephane Xiberras
Creative Director: Nicholas Bakshi
Copywriter: Matt Jones
Art Director: Abi Stephenson
Designer: Anthony Tavares
Director: Fredrik Bond
Production Companies: Very Content, Stink

This work from BETC and Citroën, “Ami Paris,” introduces the 100 percent electric Citroën Ami.

There are a few unique qualities to this vehicle. To start, it’s named after a station wagon-esque model that was born in the 1960s. The difference between that family car and this one is striking: The original Ami could comfortably contain five people and then some.

Today’s Ami is more for the nomadic urbanite: It holds two people max, and it’s also not technically classified as a car. It’s a quadricycle that doesn’t exceed 27 mph.

This might sound disappointing, but it has a lot going for it. To start, traffic in Paris is horrendous. It’s frustratingly slow to begin with, so you’re not likely to pass that speed limit anyway—certainly not in the daytime. Most cars spend their time idling and wasting gas, to the frustration of drivers and also pedestrians: Covid confinement was a revelation in terms of how clean the city’s air could be, and the return of cars in May has not earned them any goodwill.

A vehicle that is ultimately less of a car will be welcome on the streets of a changing Paris. The Ami is quiet, lithe and not designed to get you from A to B at breakneck speed. That will make it a welcome companion on the city’s redesigned streets: During confinement, mayor Anne Hidalgo added over 30 miles of new bike lanes. Bolstered by a governmental package that helps subsidize people who maintain bikes or buy new ones, bike use in France overall rose 44 percent since confinement ended.

The Ami’s speed cap also means it can be driven without a license, making it accessible to people from age 14 upward. This increases mobility possibilities for more people instead of further constraining existing drivers. 

All this is in keeping with Citroën’s 2020 commitment to “unlock urban mobility for everyone.” The brand also partnered with Free2Move to create a car-sharing offering. Downloading the app will tell you where an Ami is available for use, giving Parisians a chance to both test the car in real situations, and get accustomed to the look of it zipping around the city. 
 
To better align with the city’s spirit, BETC added an extra friendly touch (apt, given the definition of “ami”): Paris is not a monolithic culture, at least not from the inside. Parisians identify themselves by their neighborhoods, each with their own style and identity. You may know a few: A Marais hipster is markedly different from the grungy urban cool of a Belleville inhabitant. And neither have much in common with the new-school posh of revivified Batignolles. 

Thus, each Ami in the Free2Move fleet has been dressed in the colors of 20 iconic districts, using stories and anecdotes from actual Parisians.

The launch of Citroën’s Ami, which happened on Aug. 24 during the Cercle Le Brun event, is reinforced by a geolocalized social campaign composed of mini-films, highlighting the Parisians who helped develop its designs. The car-sharing service will unroll in weeks to come. 

See those films here:

CREDITS

BRAND: Citroën
PRODUCT: Citroën Ami – 100% ëlectric
CAMPAIGN: Ami Paris
BRAND MANAGEMENT: Arnaud Belloni, Bruno Gisquet, Sylvain Peraldi, Amélie De Chabannes
AGENCY: TRACTION/BETC
AGENCY MANAGEMENT: Bertille Toledano, Hugues Reboul, Julien Grimaldi, Anyce Nedir, Chloé Pirajean, Aude Devaux, Thomas Jaffeux
EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Stéphane Xiberras
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Nicolas Lautier
ASSOCIATE CREATIVE DIRECTOR: David Derouet
COPYWRITER: Stephan Schwarz
ART DIRECTORS: Jacques Decazes, Moritz Maus, Les Graphiquants
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTORS: Melissa Hofman, Alice Resseguier, Arthur Pelissier, Dylan Legrand
TRAFFIC: Nina De Wet, Celia Chiarotto-Dafi
CREATIVE PRODUCER: Caroline Petrucelli
ASSISTANT TV PRODUCER: Manon Poudens
STRATEGIC PLANNER: Philippe Martin-Davies
PRODUCTION COMPANY: SOLDATS.TV
DIRECTOR: Jules Renault
LINE PRODUCER: Pierre Cazenave
PRODUCTION MANAGER: Charlotte Giral
INFLUENCE/SOCIAL MEDIA: BETC Digital, Mathilde Draeger, Claire Nascimbeni, Loubna Harifi
PRINT STUDIO: Bullprint
SOUND STUDIO: Start Rec
SOUNDTRACK: ” Afe ” Mokado
1st AIRDATE: 24 August, 2020
DURATION: 1 Year 
TERRITORY: France
ACTORS: Francis Bonneau, Maria Romualdo, Martine Fabregue, Danny Leveau, David Twose
MEDIA PLAN: WEB / PR