You're walking down the street and you see a giant 3-D mouth singing opera. Maybe you see an enormous, realistic rugby player taking a shower. Perhaps a gigantic Marilyn Monroe dress blowing in the breeze grabs your attention on your way to a bus stop that plays disco music if you touch the weird medallion-adorned hairy chest of a swarthy dude.
Well, if you're in France and you encounter any of these scenarios, you've probably come across the latest outdoor campaign from SNCF French Railways and agency TBWA\Paris. These crazy larger-than-life ads aim to inspire people to travel to places they are passionate about.
If you are not in France and you see these things, you may want to seek therapy.
This is what it sounds like when you drink too much, then get behind the wheel. Surprise: It does not have a happy ending.
A new PSA by ad agency La Chose for French road safety organization Association Victimes et Citoyens uses a simple yet effective single shot of a vinyl record player to offer a fresh version of a familiar and important point.
Perhaps counterintuitively, the absence of any violent footage actually increases the power of the message. The literal realization of the casual "same old song" metaphor (translated from "la méme chanson" in French) risks coming off as a little off kilter or even off color, since there isn't actually a song, and the subject matter is so serious.
But the whole concept hinges on the idiom, and the ad does too good a job of illustrating the point to nitpick much. The skips in the audio easily build suspense, to the point where, sadly, anyone with half a brain will know where the storyline is going—but has to hear it out to be sure.
La Chose also made 300 12-inch vinyl records featuring the ad's soundtrack and sent them to journalists. That should be a hit at parties.
In the U.S., ads about weight usually come in the form of relatively thin women eating light yogurt. Awareness of obesity, especially in children, hasn't really taken off.
But in France, this ad has taken off—and it wasn't even approved to run.
The ad was made by David Lesage, a student in Belgium, but gained some press after the L'Express newspaper mistook it for an ad released by the French Ministry of Health and ran it in the paper.
The ad shows melting ice cream that also looks like an obese abdomen, with the caption, "L'obésité commence dès le plus jeune âge." Translation: "Obesity begins at a young age."
AdFreak spoke with Lesage, who said, "I really like to work on social causes in general. I think obesity seemed to be an important subject nowadays, and it has interesting creative potential."
If you like to cook, eat or look at pretty things, enjoy this gorgeously hypnotic bit of food porn from French coffee brand Carte Noir.
Created by Proximity BBDO and two directors from Le Potager, the visual craft is on par with Wieden + Kennedy's bar-setting 2012 paean to vegetables for British butter brand Lurpak. Someone more savvy to kitchens than I will have to parse exactly what's happening when, but basically it's about baking delicious little pastries filled with coffee-flavored cream to eat with your coffee ("Chou" also means cabbage in French, but don't be confused).
The ambitious among you can find out how to make them, in French, over at the Carte Noire website, along with the following message. "Discover Rose by Carte Noire, greedy video reserved for women. Exclusively for men, this recipe is to enjoy with friends. But you resist the urge to share these adorable cabbage with your lover?" OK, maybe Google Translate didn't nail the details, but you get the idea. "Download the recipe without waiting!" is pretty clear, though.
Overenthusiastic copywriting is always better in languages you don't actually speak, because you don't mind that ads are talking to you like a 3-year-old.
CREDITS Client: Carte Noire Agency: Proximity BBDO, Paris Directors: M. Roulier et P. Lhomme Production Company: Le Potager Food dDesigner: Emmanuel Turiot Style Designer: Sylvie Bagros Editing: Bruno Herlin Music Supervisor, Composer: Aymeric Lepage Sound Design: The Hot Line
Découverte de « Façades » : le nom de la série encore en cours du photographe français Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy. Il a imaginé ce que serait une ville exclusivement composée de façades retirées du reste de la bâtisse. Cela donne des villes étranges mais plus spacieuses. Le tout est disponible dans la suite de l’article.
Despite dozens of charges, French officials have been confounded in efforts to stop the performances of Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who is seen as anti-Semitic.
L’artiste japonais Aki Inomata s’est amusée a imaginer des coquilles de bernard-l’ermites s’inspirant de l’architecture imprimées en 3D. Un processus intéressant et visuellement très réussie, inspiré par les nombreux voyages de l’artiste entre les 2 pays à découvrir en images dans la suite.
This series of French McDonald's ads for three new sandwiches proves that, for better or worse, European stereotypes of Americans have changed a bit over the years. Instead of being fat tourists or dumb rednecks, we're now hockey players, cops and sexy lifeguards demanding that total strangers hand over their Double Shiny Bacon burgers.
Slate and Consumerist think the whole thing is out of left field, but I disagree. Sure, the hockey player is more of a Canadian icon (unless you live in Detroit), but the other two make sense enough. And unfortunately, we probably have earned a reputation as loud ostentatious bullies who always want what other people have.
Composée d’une matrice de 256 ballons gonflés à l’hélium et équipés de LEDs, Cyclique est une superbe installation imaginée par le Collectif Coin ainsi que Nohista réagissant à la musique, le tout dans le cadre de la Nuit Blanche 2013 à Amiens en France. A découvrir en vidéo et détails dans la suite de l’article.
A 12-year, $4.9 billion deal that gives Rogers Communications the rights to all national hockey telecasts in Canada beginning next season surpasses the league’s agreement with CBC, TSN and a French-language cable network.
Officers were searching for the man who opened fire on Monday at the headquarters of Libération, a left-leaning daily, severely wounding a photographer’s assistant.
At a Paris service for two Radio France Internationale journalists abducted and killed in Mali over the weekend, Malian officials seemed to be asking for France’s continued support.
The Internet company said it would appeal a French court’s ruling that it strip from its search results nine images of the former European racing chief Max Mosley.
Two reporters for Radio France Internationale had been interviewing a leader with a separatist group in Mali’s unstable desert north. Their bodies were found with their throats slit.
French lawmakers on Thursday approved a law that bars online booksellers from offering free delivery to customers on top of a maximum 5 percent discount on books.
La marque BMW déjà présente dans le domaine de la photographie (Paris Photo, Rencontres d’Arles…), s’est alliée à Eric Tabuchi pour La Route du Photographe. A cette occasion, il a créé une série de photos inédites d’espaces péri-urbains vides de toute présence humaine, qui retrace son parcours du 16 au 25 septembre.
La Route du Photographe invitait les internautes à participer et à suivre Eric Tabuchi, pas à pas sur Facebook et via Google Maps, pendant 10 jours sur 4 000 km à travers la France, pour réaliser une série de photos de son road trip, exposées en ligne et au Brand Store BMW George V à Paris en octobre. Pour en savoir plus ici.
L’artiste argentin Leandro Erlich a encore frappé avec cette installation présentant une chambre arrachée d’un immeuble et suspendue dans les airs au dessus de la ville. Accessible par une échelle, son oeuvre intitulée “Monte-meubles – L’ultime déménagement” a été créée pour le festival d’art Le Voyage à Nantes.
BETC and Canal+ together produced one of the most beloved ads of recent years in "The Bear," a hilarious and impeccably produced spot that won the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes in 2012. The French agency and client are now back with their latest commercial—an intriguingly odd production starring a bunch of dwarf clowns.
Why dwarf clowns? The spot promotes a new Canal+ channel, launching this month, that's fully dedicated to TV series. The great thing about TV series is you're always dying to see what happens next. Likewise, in watching this ad, the viewer has no idea who these dwarf clowns are, or what they're going to do next. And then, at the end, it turns out, rather absurdly, that they've been subjected to a cliffhanger themselves, which explains their peripatetic behavior.
"The idea was to make an intriguing film that creates suspense—you can't wait to find out how it ends. Just like when you watch a good series," says Stéphane Xiberras, president and chief creative officer of BETC Paris. "This was one of the reasons we chose dwarf clowns; in great series there's often something a bit odd about the unusual characters that makes you become attached to them—a cop serial killer, a depressed mafioso, a family of undertakers."
The spot was shot in Vancouver this summer. It was directed by Steve Rogers and will be followed by an outdoor campaign all over France. Credits below.
CREDITS Client: Canal+ Client Management: Alice Holzman, Elodie Bassinet, Anne-Gaëlle Petri, Coline André Agency: BETC Paris Agency Management: Bertille Toledano, Guillaume Espinet, Alix de Luze, Pauline Filippi, Marius Chiumino Executive Creative Director: Stephane Xiberras Copywriter: Jean-Christophe Royer Art Director: Eric Astorgue Assistant Art Director: Damien Binello Strategic Planning: Clarisse Lacarrau, Vianney Vaute Traffic: Coralie Chasset TV Producer: Isabelle Menard Production Company: Wanda Producer: Jérôme Denis Sound Production: Kouz Director: Steve Rogers
Après la vidéo d’Entertainment de Phoenix à Versailles, La Blogothèque nous offre une vidéo de 20 minutes réalisée par Colin Solal Cardo dans le cadre des Take Away Show, proposant ainsi de découvrir 4 morceaux du groupe joués en live dans des lieux insolites, à l’image de « Bourgeois » tournée dans un jet en plein vol.
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