Vive La Publicite!

I spent the first five years of my career working as a copywriter in France. I ultimately married into the country, and now have two teen-aged children who are half French. Because of that, and since I am now also working for a French company (The Publicis Groupe acquired Digitas early this year), I simply cannot let today go by without a tip of the chapeau to our French friends.

As many of you know, today all of France is celebrating Bastille Day. The French National holiday, Bastille Day commemorates the events of July 14th, 1789, when a group of angry French commoners, fed up with a poorly behaving king, stormed the Bastille prison. Their actions and subsequent revolution essentially spelled the end of the line for the French Monarchy, and the beginnings of democracy, which, of course, led to a thriving advertising industry about 150 years later.

Advertising for consumer packaged goods (or produits de grande consummation), like advertising for other stuff, is, generally speaking, a little different in France. French advertisers tend to rely less on rational benefits and more on emotion, intellect and entertainment.In celebration of Bastille Day, and also to celebrate the always interesting and often amusing relationship between our two countries, today I thought I would highlight some French interactive work for an American product: Sunsilk shampoo. (http://www.pourtoutvousdire.com/marques/Sunsilk.html)

The site says that this is “the first sitcom conceived specifically for the internet by a brand.” It’s pretty well done, too (although I only watched four of the three-minute webisodes). There’s some product placement, but not a ton.

Unlike the Spanish-language example (http://www.univision.com/contentroot/uol/10portada/content/jhtml/malena/NOMETA_malena_main.jhtml) I pointed out earlier this week (which was created and hosted by Univision), this experience is housed on the Unilever site, which, I think, was a missed opportunity to attract a much larger number of shampoo buyers. But, as my French ad friends would put it, c’est la vie.