In “Gates,” car service Heetch offers a fresh ode to the suburbs of greater Paris. Such areas are mostly avoided by city dwellers and generally seen as where the riffraff live. (It’s also harder to get cars to pick you up there, or take you back, because of these same prejudices.) BETC Paris’ work is a love letter to the “gates” that divide the metropolis from its surroundings—letting people in, watching people go and connecting different worlds.

Rice, rice, baby! In a campaign of the same name, Müller Yogurt & Desserts showcases its partnership with footballer Declan Rice in the U.K. This promotes its Rice Protein offering during a “Summer of Sport.” In a series of billboard installations, Declan is shown holding a 3D car over his head while retrieving a ball. It’s very Popeye. Work by VCCP.

We’ll wrap with a surreal and charming initiative from independent insurance firm Helan in Belgium. Created by FamousGrey, the campaign poses a question: “We all take care of someone, but who takes care of us?” The answer: Insurance! LOL. We like how it illustrates the concept of interdependence.

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

It’s a bottle of Evian. 

Um, thanks. You got a sandwich to go with that? It’s a long trek back to camp!

BETC Paris and ace music video director Henry Scholfield created an impressive glacial world that calls to mind Rankin-Bass holiday specials—but with product placements. Pharrell Williams’ “Joy” provides the suitably smooth soundtrack.

“I loved how this concept is actually an excellent life philosophy, ‘Live Young!,’ cleverly disguised as a brand campaign,” Scholfield says in press materials. “I wanted this irreverence and joie de vivre to come to life in each of our depictions of their world, from what they do to what they wear, while capturing the spirit of the ‘Mountain of Youth,’ and its inhabitants, who are a lotta bit mischievous and a little bit wild.”

As wild as babies playing tennis? No sign of the brand’s iconic infants here. Wah?

Kidding aside, it’s a crisp, artful effort, visually slick, a tad OTT and really quite charming.

Evian sought to impart a sense of “French chic and unconventional flair,” says David Borowiec, senior global director at brand parent Danone.

“We hope the ‘Mountain of Youth’ will help Evian achieve its purpose of inspiring people to live young—embracing a rejuvenating, youthful lifestyle, no matter your age.”

Along with the TV, the global push features OOH, print and digital assets.

Air travel’s going to the dogs all over the place these days.

First, Bark Air pounded home its canine+ message with cuddly pups on a plane. Now, French TV network Canal+ sends up flicks about flights in peril to hype its support for the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

In a four-minute spot, the pilots lose consciousness and a flight attendant struggles to steer the plane.

You know what could really save the day? Some dude in the tower mansplaining endlessness, droning on and on and on, never pausing his motivational pablum, filling the space like I’m doing now with a veritable jet-stream of words, a reverse example of the brevity viewers will enjoy at the short film fest.

As for the fate of the airliner, well…

Sorry, my man. No pension for you.

BETC Paris and director Dario Fau developed the spot, which broke last week across Canal+ platforms and online.

“For decades, we have been captivated by action movies starring larger-than-life heroes such as Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise. And these actors—always playing good guys in movies—got us used to witty monologues full of heart but often way too long,” the agency explains in campaign materials.

“These have become memeifed to the point that we now expect to hear them in those types of movies and no longer question them as viewers. However, when you think about it, these interactions are rarely essential to the plot. And they often occur at odd moments, right in the middle of the heightened tension.”

“Who has never felt impatient listening to a hero’s monologue while watching an action flick?” The agency says. “Who’s never uttered under their breath ‘Come on, just kill him already!’ Sometimes, shorter is better.”

Communicating that notion in a longish clip feels smartly counterintuitive. The extra time’s well spent and the brand proposition totally lands—though the same can’t be said for the plane.

VCCP London enlisted a judgmental mallard for Keep Britain Tidy. Its job: enlighten people who drop cigarette butts, which account for 66 percent of England’s litter. The approach is meant to “educate” smokers that butts are trash, without alienating them … hence the duck? They swear there was lots of psychology involved.

Turkey dinner is a common British holiday tradition, and PETA U.K. would like to end that right now. So, House 337 cast actor Jane Horrocks as an animated turkey that sings. Honestly, she’s even judgier than the anti-litter duck. Obviously that doesn’t mean she should die. One shouldn’t expect victims to be perfect. It’s just a weird approach. On the other hand, leaving us with mixed feelings is classic PETA.

For Argos in the U.K., The&Partnership presents “Dancer,” starring Connie the doll grooving to “Le Freak” by Chic. The toy dinosaur Trevor tries to film her, but tech is not his forte. Briefly, we wondered whether a crossover movie between Chuckie and Toy Story could have legs.

“Unwrap Your Story” is Zalando’s holiday ad by 72andSunny. It stars Chloë Sevigny, who is now a fashion designer. It features a visual “journal” of moments from her life, and ties multifaceted aspects of personhood to the diverse gifts you can purchase through this European version of Zappos.

Burger King France and Buzzman worked with the Papillons association on a campaign for anti-bullying day. The resto franchise greyed out one in 10 tables, self-checkout machines, crowns, bags, even letters in its windows. It did so to illustrate that while one grey thing in 10 leaps out, one bullied kid in 10 is less obvious. Profits from the Junior Menu on anti-bullying day were donated to Les Papillons.

Meet Baa-bour, who represents the British retailer Barbour in this quaint Shaun the Sheep ‘toon. It’s charming and apt, as Barbour’s marketing strategy mostly lies in savvy, well-considered alliances with other brands. There’s also a gift guide. Work by Journey Further.

We were overly delighted by “Find Your Dream Gift,” created for Chanel Watches and Fine Jewelry by Omnicom in France. It’s a luxury take on Bedknobs and Broomsticks. There’s a magic bed, lush presents appear out of nowhere, and—best of all—nobody ever has to leave the sheets, which are always crisp. In one especially beautiful scene, the bed floats on the river under a full moon, and in front of the Château de Chenonceau, where the ad was filmed. Owls hoot as Yoon Young Bae fishes in her pyjamas (even the rod is Chanel!). The other models present are Kim Schell and Adesuwa Aighewi. This is the vibe we’re starting our weekend with.

Did you ever watch or read The Little Prince? When he’s sad, he scrapes his chair across his tiny planet to watch an endless series of sunsets. Delsey Paris’ “Eternal Sunrise” by Fred & Farid New York is sort of like that, but with a first-streaks-of-day vibe. Also, you have influencers. (We would have been fine with just the chair.)

Milka’s “Giving the Greatest Gift” is brought to you by Ogilvy Germany as part of the WPP All Stars team for Mondelez. A boy becomes besties with his winking chocolate Santa bar. They do everything together. Then his sister gets sad about breaking the tree-topper, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice. This made us want to bite a candy Santa’s head off, so in that sense it works.

Another day, another opportunity to correct AI biases in advertising. It turns out that, whenever the French suburbs (la banlieue) are plugged into a Midjourney prompt, the tech produces racist, classist and dystopian imagery. Heetch, a ridesharing app popular with banlieue kids, worked with BETC Paris to create postcards that depict the diversity and vitality of actual suburban life. The cards, available in Heetch cars and in kiosks throughout Paris-bordering ‘burbs, were also sent to the 11 engineers who created Midjourney. They include a QR code designed to help correct the dataset.

We suspect the pitch for “Fancy a McDonald’s this Christmas?,” created by Leo Burnett U.K., went: “Imagine if every scene in Love Actually was shot simultaneously, but then everyone randomly walked off their sets and went to McD’s.” The ad even features a guy trying to pick somebody up by forcing them to read words on their doorstep, except he gets short shrift because everybody’s already started their exodus toward fast food Xanadu (itself reminiscent of the proposal scene in Portugal). It’s set to bits of Van Halen’s “Jump.”

Swedish music fest Way Out West was hurtin’ for people who couldn’t come. So, alongside BBDO Nordics, it made sure they could at least come. We give you “The Livebrator,” a sex toy whose vibrations synced to the music being performed on-site. From Gothenburg to genitals the world over! This would make a great tourism campaign. Created in partnership with Sweden’s Association of Sexual Education.

‘Tis the year of Anne Hathaway blossoming into a fashion icon, and it climaxes—heh, sorry—in “Let the Festivities Begin” for Bulgari by Anomaly in Italy. The ad is apparently inspired by “Rome’s architectural wonders,” but Hathaway is so strangely CGI’ed that she looks like those ‘toonish AI portraits everybody was using as profile pictures for awhile. In keeping with the uncanny valley vibe, she leaves this plane through a glowing golden box. Maybe she’s heading to the metaverse.

People are pissed about this Marks & Spencer Clothing & Home ad by Mother London. Set to a Ray BLK cover of Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” it features revelers going rogue at various stages of enforced holiday frolic. Last week, the brand was excoriated by a teacher who wrote, “When our nation is on its knees … this is not the time for you to encourage people to ignore the inspirational spirit of Christmas of self-sacrifice, gratitude, giving of one’s time and finances…” It goes on like that, and after awhile, we would have set a crème brûlée torch to anything within proximity. 

MediaPost reports that M&S also posted an outtake on Instagram, which included a closeup of red and green paper hats being burned. Forty people construed it as a potential attack on the Palestinian flag and complained to the U.K.’s ad watchdog group. We just can’t have nice things. This is why John Lewis gives us carnivore plants.

Airports aren’t just liminal spaces; you can store memories in them! With agency St. Luke’s, Heathrow reminds you that it, too, can be a place where you remember Grandpa (shown in “Keepsake,” below). Also see “Love,” about a young couple projecting onto an older one while strolling the duty free; and “Arrival,” in which a multi-generational family gets big news in a Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food restaurant.

For a mesmerizing minute, LADAPT’s “A World Without Limits” by BETC Paris renews our sense of wonder about where technology could take us. (Maybe someday we will chomp a mammoth meatball.) But it grinds down with a question that borders on the (rightfully) ridiculous: With all this pie-in-the-sky rhetoric, why’s it still “complicated” to hire disabled people? One in three companies still haven’t. This precedes European Disability Employment Week, which runs from Nov. 20-26.

In Belgium, Hungry Minds made a deceptively simple ad about cybercrime that also manages to be pretty scary. In “A Simple Click, a Major Clack,” a dopey-looking chap taps his phone. Suddenly everything in his house starts disappearing in a telltale shimmer of digital static. It’s as if cybercriminals were poltergeists, or he was living in The Matrix. This is for Digital Wallonia, which educates people about online hygiene.

Of all the cancers, we most often forget about blood cancer, which scares us most. DKMS and Serviceplan Cologne give us #TakeTwo, a campaign about second chances. The first season introduces us to Daniel, who got leukemia at 19. Following a stem cell donation, he can now fulfill his dream of becoming a tattoo artist. Four episodes follow his journey. Ep 1’s below, but also watch 2, 3 and 4.

It’s rare we see Italian work around here, and we’re thirsty for more, but Lamborghini could do a little better than “Thunder Meets Lightning.” Made by BMF to promote the Revuelto, it features three pro driver buds in a Lambo race challenge that goes from Bologna to the Piero Taruffi Vallelunga Circuit near Rome. Mini Cooper did this better in The Italian Job.

Why settle for first class when you can upgrade to French class? Marcel literally just made that up for DS Automobiles, and if it catches on, we might die of pretentiousness. The ad features a car cruising upside-down over clouds, very Inception meets Vanilla Sky (before both movies get chaotic and scary). It’s set to a cover of “Cheek to Cheek.” This is a promo for the DS 4’s comfort options, which include great acoustics and suspension, night vision, and … wait for it … ChatGPT. (Do we even want to know why?)

In Portugal, Betclic and Shutterstock made a documentary called “Surfing Through the Odds.” It’s an effective 20-minute portrait of African girls fighting for empowerment while surfing with SOMA Surf, an NGO based in São Tomé and Príncipe. Photos of them doing their thing live in the Shutterstock image bank, making them the first Black female surfers to appear in a for-use collection of images and videos … which is nuts. (We’re not totally clear what Betclic gets out of it, besides points with Santa.)

With Innocean, Hyundai Motor U.K. made a series of Channel 4 idents that promote how the car can charge and power appliances. In this case, it chose to focus on a film projector. The ads feature the IONIQ 5 and 6 and the Kona Electric, projecting stuff from different film genres on East London streets. See “Cyber,” “Unicorn” and “Dolphin.” We hope they do another appliance, and that it’s a high-power blender. (We just miss this guy.)

Goings-on: The Polish Association of the Deaf and Group One launched UNMUTE Agency, a first-of-its-kind communications endeavor that’s dedicated to connecting brands and disabled communities. The agency’s first client is BLIK. Notably, from June 2025 onward, private European companies must comply with the EU’s European Accessibility Act, dedicated to … well, making products and services more accessible.

Ogilvy Paris is launching its third edition of Hors-Circuit, a contest in support of more DEI in the creative field. This year, it’s doing it in partnership with Instagram and nonprofit Les Déterminés. Emerging artists have until Nov. 30 to share an Instagram reel of potential projects; the winner gets full creative support. Last year, dancer, screenwriter and director Eugène Bolengu won. He’s currently producing a short film with H&O, Ogilvy Paris’ production arm.

Serviceplan Group absorbed Equmedia in Spain. It will be integrated with Mediaplus, and renamed Mediaplus Equmedia. Guess this means we have to mention that other merger: WPP is mashing up Wunderman Thompson and VMLY&R. The resulting entity, VML, goes operational from Jan. 1. Jon Cook will serve as global CEO; Debbi Vandeven will be global chief creative officer.

Our Euro ad of the week is this serotonin-swathed ’80s style video, “Together We Go Further,” by adam&eveDDB for Eurostar. Two women lock eyes on the train and transform into cartoons à la a-ha!, adventuring from Amsterdam to Brussels to London to Paris to Cologne—cities now serviced by the newly-combined Eurostar and Thalys. Their trip promotes the Eurostar Club program. It’s like a sweet and colorful cereal.

There’s a Jean de la Fontaine fable in France called “The Wolf and the Lamb.” It doesn’t end well for the lamb. To promote its Fall ’23 collection, Coperni adapted the tale to depict a utopian relationship between humans and machines, using a polymorphic video featuring Lila Grace Moss and “Spot” robots from Boston Dynamics.

This whole thing is designed to make us feel more comfortable with the relationship between AI and creativity. That’s why there aren’t any sad lamb hangovers in its depiction (because between robots and people, nobody doubts who the lambs would be). On a website powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, endlessly different algorithmically-generated versions of the story spool out. Each last 40 seconds, and riff on both the fable and Coperni’s latest designs.

In Argentina, gas and electricity company EDP collabed with Havas Lisbon to make “United For a Wonderful World,” which depicts astronauts crooning the Louis Armstrong classic to our little blue dot. Its depiction of the “Overview Effect” gets pretty close to giving it to us until the jarring CTA voiceover at the end. The only thing we ended up doing collectively was wincing. 

Idris Elba zips through London with his progeny—on loveseats!—to promote some Sky Cinema subscriber bait: Two free movie tickets every month! (We’d take those.) Not much else here, just some gratuitous fun Elba. (He’s been doing Sky Cinema ads forever, so this relationship is like an occasional snack drop. Expectations ain’t high, it’s very chill.) The piece was conceived by Sky Creative, and directed by Rodrigo Valdes of Birth’s U.K. office, led by Kate Elson.

It’s not often that suicide prevention work feels cinematic and fun. Yet that’s what we get in this not-very-PC offering by agency Great Guns, for the U.K. charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). The latter appointed comedian Romesh Ranganathan as their ambassador and he is *chef’s kiss.*

For client Triumph, which it won late last year, Herezie Paris created a print campaign where the rotations of women athletes and dancers, seen from above and mirrored, invite one to consider breasts (but in an artful way?). This backs the brand’s Triaction Sports Bras. It’s pretty and we wish we had a more graceful description for it. Alas, life is compromise.

Let’s stay on-topic: For Alexander Monro Hospital in The Netherlands, TBWANeboko teaches you the alphabet all over again. With boobs. This is, of course, for breast cancer.

Iconoclast and Halal Amsterdam made a visually pleasing video to promote a ​”Culers del Món” (“Colors of the World”) capsule collection from Patta, FC Barcelona and Nike. Throughout the world (and somewhat in the style of “It’s a Small World”), fans of FC Barcelona communally sing the club anthem “Cant del Barça.” X-ray shots show the club colors running through their veins (blue) and arteries (green)—what the agency calls their shared Barçablood. The collection was released in Patta stores on Oct. 13, and can be found on the SNKRS app, fcbarcelona.com and certain Nike partner stores soon.

If you can steal something from a French Distance shop—then outrun distance sprinter Mickael Zeze, who’ll be hot on your heels—you can keep what you’ve purloined. That’s “Rob It to Get It” by BETC Paris.

Alongside the Association of German Advertising Film Producers, Akkurat Studios in Berlin launched Pitchstandard 2.0, an initiative designed to make pitch culture more fair. “The entire market of advertisers will benefit from these standards, since the effort of customers and agencies in the areas of producing, creation and cost control will also be reduced,” they write. We’d love to peep some pitch reform, and we’re glad to see prod companies giving it a go. Production often gets short shrift in the creative sector.

Moving, shaking: Mother London won the M&S Clothing business, following House 337’s loss of it. Over at Alexander McQueen, Seán McGirr was appointed creative director, succeeding living legend Sarah Burton, who elaborated the brand beautifully after McQueen’s death. McGirr was the creative force behind J.W. Anderson, which has a very cute Wes Anderson vibe. We’re curious to see what he contributes to McQueen’s intentionally vampy DNA. Right now, with nothing but speculation at hand, it all feels very “leathery nightlife meets Wednesday afternoon tea.” Marcel Paris has two new co-presidents: Youri Guerassimov and Gaëtan du Peloux, who’ll be working with Pascal Nessim. (A triumvirate! That historically works so well).

Welcome to this week’s Eurovisions. We have a confession: There aren’t any hot cross buns in here, just cinnamon rolls. But they’re also kinda pretending to be something they’re not. In Åkestam Holst’s work for Swedish convenience store Pressbyrån, cinnamon buns (or “kanelbulle” in Swedish) are punted like luxury perfume. “Needless to say, we are not that good at French,” says the agency’s Henrik Billing.

Fun facts: Cinnamon rolls are Sweden’s fave pastry. They even have their own special day. Apparently much of the collateral for this work’s been stolen throughout major cities. Is it the weird French? The love of cinnamon rolls? The sparkly lady? We’ll never know, but the brand and agency call it “equally confusing and flattering.”

Last kiss goodbye from Paris Fashion Week: Christian Dior accompanies actress Souheila Yacoub ahead of her red carpet appearance for the Venice International Film Festival. She’s wearing a princessy but punk dress by the fashion house’s Maria Grazia Chiuri. This is mostly an indulgent view of Venice’s historic canals, which have become slightly less accessible.

Self-effacing, or self-defacing? Ikea Norway’s “Life is Not a Catalog” spent the past month making waves in its home country, and is doing victory laps through English-speaking ad publications. The work depicts aesthetic homescapes sullied by pee, vomit and parties. (Kinda feels like a documentary.) A nice reminder that Ikea products are backdrops and supports for life, which takes precedence. Ikea’s spent years honing that message. Below is “Puke.”

Netflix France and agency Jellyfish promote the return of Lupin, a series about a gentleman burglar, with out-of-home ads that look like luxury jewelry promotions. Except all the jewelry is missing.

Meta tapped BETC Paris to create an ad for the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France. “Passion Is Meant to Be Shared” leverages cartoony social network representations of every country, like a wallaby for Australia and a shamrock for Ireland. France’s is a rooster, which you’ll see plenty of in this work. 

More from BETC Paris: For a client called Morning, which rethinks corporate spaces with collaboration at the center, the agency revisited stock imagery of offices.

To plug Icelandair’s stopover offering—where people can book stops in Iceland between European and North American destinations—agencies Kubbco and Hvíta Húsið conceived “The Polite Tourist Bouncer.” The premise is that the stopover thing is so popular that people aren’t catching their connecting flights, so a bouncer is needed. Imagine if ICE were just one guy and a cute dog, and all those naughty “overstayers” weren’t treated like potential illegal immigrants, and Europe weren’t in the middle of a migrant crisis. Fun! Absolutely no notes.

With help from VCCP London, Domino’s revels in tearing loved ones apart. Sidenote: Apparently pizza boxes are awful? We are not experts on this topic.

BBH London supersized women for the new season of Barclay’s Women’s Super League. 

Responding to EU scrutiny around data gathering and sales (which is becoming an existential issue), Meta’s proposed charging EU citizens something like $17 a month for Facebook and Instagram experiences that don’t sell data. That’s pricier than your average OTT, and doesn’t even include linked accounts. (Of note: EU residents never even got access to the short-lived Threads because it failed to comply with data protection laws, indicating policymakers are increasingly confident that unfettered access to social networks is less important to people than once believed. Many EU countries have banned Google Analytics, unthinkable a handful of years ago.)

We’ll wrap with something weird, in the spirit of everything being weird now. Prettybird’s Sophie Muller recently directed the music video for “Mosquito” by PinkPantheress. It’s opulent and pretty, an escapist story about girlfriends going no-holds-barred shopping in London. Commercial catnip, very Gossip Girl, lots of brand-dropping. Amidst it all, PinkPantheress persists in carrying what appears to be a clay pigeon. (A Nikola Tesla reference? Probably not.)

Samuel L. Jackson makes everything better. We’ve cherished his capacity to own the last word on any topic since Pulp Fiction, where his character quits the gangster life to be “like Cain in Kung Fu, walking place to place” so he can “meet people and get in adventures.” We believe this quote also single-handedly inspired the Pokémon trainer lifestyle. Anyway, Warburtons Toastie Loaf hired Jackson to impersonate their chairman and appear in full hell-hath-no-fury mode in “Mad About the Bread,” where he defends the product’s honor to some rando on the internet.

We hate people who are wrong on the internet. So does Sam LJ, and apparently so does Warburtons, which clearly struggles to admit that out loud on its own for some reason. Ad by Joyful & Triumphant.

The Lego Group released the fall installment of its “Find Your Flow” campaign. It features a woman coming home after a crap day and building a Lego wildflower set. As she works, she reimagines the day’s stressors as Lego blocks that undo themselves in a most satisfying manner. The ad, itself an anti-stressor, makes good use of ASMR-tingling block sounds, and builds on a year-long effort to attract adult builders through mindfulness. It’s very “take me back to the confinement days.” Accompanying work with musicians/influencers can be found here and here. (We’ll pop the latter in under this para in case you’re in a “chill beats” mood.)

In ongoing anti-stressors, Candy Crush is launching a trio of “immersive” ads that break the fourth wall, using as many real-world effects as possible. F/X experts were consulted to convey the candy explosions realistically. Each ad promotes a different aspect adults love about the game: “excitement, sweet victory and relaxation.” (Don’t scoff; one way to combat PTSD is to play Tetris, or similar games, directly after a traumatic event.) Created by BBH London with the in-house creative team at King. Here’s one ad, which seems like it’s going to go a different kind of relaxing way, but maybe that’s because we just finished binging Sex Education (we’re easily influenced by rhetorical questions).

Prada now has a beauty line, Prada Beauty, representing the biggest L’Oréal Luxe launch in five years. It plans to differentiate itself by claiming to be both technologically and creatively driven. For the ad, BETC Paris squeezed in numerous allusions to facial scanning, android-esque porelessness, and what looks like code coursing through pigments. We’re reminded of The Matrix’s Merovingian, who pops that naughty program in a woman’s dessert.

Goings-on: Last night for Paris Fashion Week, Christian Louboutin livestreamed its fourth edition of #TheLoubiShow, a hypnotic combo of fashion, surprising performances that shouldn’t go together but do, and virtual effects. See the replay below. It’s the most aesthetically pleasing hour we’ve ever spent on LinkedIn. When we close our eyes, we still see red, which handily evokes Louboutin soles.

As Prada showed up top, the tech and creative professions are increasingly blurred. That’s why we suggest keeping an eye on The Europas on Nov. 13 in Lisbon. Launched by TechCrunch editor Mike Butcher 15 years ago, the event’s got its figurative finger on startups that become tomorrow’s big-banner brands (e.g. Spotify, Wise, Farfetch, Depop). Think of it as a different kind of fashion show.

There are few creative environments we admire more than Amsterdam, where agencies are known for collabs and cooperations of all kinds (they notably pitch in together for space at Cannes Lions, under the banner The Dutch Embassy of Creativity). To see the magic for yourself, Oct. 13 marks the AdNight festival, a nighttime open house of different participating agencies. There’s also an afterparty, so post-office-hopping, you can see everybody all together doing what they do best: making ruckus.