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Can a Car Change a Town?

2010-08-24 08:45

'Can a car change a town?' asks the new Renault Mégane advertising campaign which compares sun-drenched Menton, on the Côte d'Azur, with the Lancastrian village of Gisburn (population 500).

The teaser ad shows a swimming pool in Menton contrasted with a puddle in Gisburn; a glamorous French couple sipping wine with a frumpy couple drinking tea from a thermos flask; and designer shoes with an old pair of slippers.



The French car company's campaign is 'based on' a cleverly-designed spoof of market research: according to Renault, statistics show that towns with more Méganes, such as Menton (above) are happier, have higher rates of fertility, and longer life expectancies.

To put this theory to the test, they send Claude, a consultant in 'joie de vivre' to Gisburn, a village with no Méganes and apparently very little joie de vivre at all.... to conduct 'The Mégane Experiment'. The hapless Claude - a kind of Gallic Borat - tries to woo the locals with the chance to win a free Mégane, but receives in return only blank stares. Francophobia, it seems, is alive and well in the tiny Lancastrian backwater.

The TV campaign features two 60-second ads and three ten-second spots, directed by Oscar-nominated Henry-Alex Rubin, which gauge the genuine reactions of Gisburn villagers to Claude.

Publicis London's executive creative director, Tom Ewart, who created the ads for Renault, says 'No one has ever done anything like it before: an unscripted shoot in a real town with real people - over the course of five days. We genuinely had no idea of what the outcome would be. The client has nerves of steel - they weren’t even on the shoot because it would have given the game away - and it paid off in spades.  The tea-cup that was thrown in anger in the auction house was real. The woman that asks for a kiss behind her husband’s back did it for real. The vicar that embraces 'joie de vivre' in the White Bull pub is real.'

A Renault spokesman said, 'This is the first phase of a light-hearted comparison of two villages,  Once you've seen the rest of the campaign, we hope you'll agree. It's a bit of mockery, dealing with nobody liking the French but having a test-drive in the car, and deciding it may be French, but it's okay, and that they are alright really.' 

But despite the reassurances of Gisburn's mayor (Renault donated £6,000 to the village), and the landlord of the White Bull pub, who realizes 'it's a humorous campaign', the concept of 'Frenchifying' an English village has not gone down well locally.  Some of the good souls of Gisburn are up in arms at what they perceive is a campaign mocking their village. A single advert would be unproblematic, but the Renault promotion extends from TV to the cinema, press, digital and social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Needless to say, no-one in sunny Menton has been complaining. Which may well prove Claude's point.

Until 30 September UK residents can win a weekend in Menton by entering the Megane Experiment prize draw