France: New Lights Emerging From The Fog

Zut alors! It’s hardly been a vintage year for French advertising, but some bright lights are shining through the winter fog. Our man in Paris, Ryan Watson, ponders the creative future in his café au lait as he meets with the French industry’s biggest, best and brightest

The mist surrounding the Eiffel Tower tugs at the heartstrings. The iconic landmark is a beautiful piece of imagery, but arrive in Paris in the dead of winter – when its peak is lost in grey fog – and it makes for glum viewing. Similarly, procrastination, a lack of forward thinking and long-standing budget constraints have hindered France’s ad scene when it comes to innovation and brave new ideas. And despite hints that the clouds could be clearing – is it all too late in the day for French creativity?

“In the US there’s a culture of investing small bets and testing stuff due to the fear of missing the next big thing, but in France it’s a bit more static. You don’t have the luxury of being able to waste money on the side,” says François Grouiller, group strategy director, Europe, Fred & Farid Group. “A lot of companies are now being what we call ‘desperately digital’ and trying to catch up.”

Fred & Farid has a significant global outlook. Having launched a base in Shanghai last year, the agency functions as one office across two locations and has been forming new creative patterns – such as its #9263 social media scheme and Bridge technology network system, which lets employees connect via a live stream around the clock. Owner and CCO, Farid Mokart, promotes the ethos: “It’s inconsistent to think about things as traditional or digital anymore. For us the common denominator has to be creativity. An idea has to be strong enough to reach the consumer wherever it is and you have to be experimental.”

If in doubt, flash-mob it

Fred & Farid isn’t the only example of encouraging attitudes and projects. Despite suggestions that it’s taken too long to pick up pace, Ogilvy & Mather has had an impressive year turning out work such as Bad Breath – a live stunt for Tic Tac; Pinball Park – a similarly natured outdoor campaign for Ford; Perrier Le Drop, a beautiful branded film helmed by Johan Renck, and for the past few months, the agency has been working on the most challenging of them all, an interactive web campaign for Perrier called 60 Lives (for release this spring). You can read more about Ogilvy and its ‘digital native’ Frédéric Levron on page 58.

From a production standpoint, on the other hand, the positivity and progress being shown still isn’t convincing. “They are shifting the lines but not fast enough,” says Jérôme Denis, executive producer at Wanda Productions. “The jobs done by some agencies – Buzzman, Ogilvy, DDB – are amazing but we’d like to get more briefs like that in. For now, we have a feeling that a new horizon is coming into view, but for some reason it seems that agencies and clients are not aiming in the same direction.”

Alexandre Hervé, VP and ECD at DDB Paris, believes that it’s not just financing ideas that can be tough, but investing the time in a new project. “Besides the money, the problem for agency creatives is time. We need to give space back to the ideas and stop spending hours in meetings on communication systems, codes and graphic standards.” He adds: “As Bernbach once said: ‘the biggest risk for a brand is not to take it.’”

Whether it be time or money to blame for the lack of spark on the French wheel of innovation, some have fed off the situation and used it to their advantage. “This is clearly a crisis and 2012 was very difficult,” says Benjamin Przespolewski, digital creative director at Fighting Fish (see page 62). “There were too many constraints with low budgets and timings were crazy.” But that didn’t stop him from launching the company last year – a hybrid, integrated production start-up focusing on a niche in the market. “Competition is up, but to create a company in a crisis is the best time as clients want new solutions and that’s perfect for us,” he explains.

Andrea Stillacci and Luc Wise, co-founders of independent agency Herezie Paris, demonstrated the same spirit when they paraded 13 medieval monks up and down La Croisette in Cannes in 2010 to mark the inception of their agency. Stillacci still feels as positive now as he did then, sitting in the boardroom above the Champs-Élysées: “It’s a pretty good time for the French industry at the moment, there is good energy and vibes.”

New ventures aren’t as common in France as they are in the US or London, however, and the small number of agencies that do launch are usually part of a wider holding group. The entrepreneurial spirit that people such as Stillacci and Wise show is admirable in such a withdrawn, conservative market, and encouraging for future progress. “We said alright, let’s do it, let’s put our balls on the table,” says Stillacci. “You have to be pretty bold to find new business and believe in yourself in France.” His agency began with no clients and has since put 22 companies on its books, generating more than €6m in revenue with a staff of 45.

If the new horizon of hope which Wanda’s Denis speaks of is approaching, the key to its longevity is the next generation of innovators and for that reason recruitment is becoming a key factor for developing the culture and dynamics within companies.

Fred & Farid is clearly commited to nurturing young creative talent and actively encourages participation in the modern, interconnected world. “We expect you to be on social media as part of your contract,” states Fred & Farid’s Grouiller. “You need to be on things like Twitter and WeChat (China’s fastest-growing social media platform). Culturally, it is very important. The fact that you use it means you understand it and can talk about it.” The agency also operates an exchange programme with Chinese creatives from its Shanghai base, which sees a constant flow of talent from the east working in Paris and vice versa.

Ogilvy & Mather’s recruitment drive has also stretched beyond France’s borders, with signings such as Swede Simon Mogren as group digital creative director, and new promotions such as Baptiste Clinet – only 28 years old and with over 30 international awards – to creative director, which keeps the faith in home-grown talent.

People are important to companies and if anything is to change in France for the better, it has to start within and filter outwards. The talent can act as an important learning curve for those stuck in traditional ways of thinking, like at Wanda, for example. “Everybody knows that the French have always been self-centered, proud and particularly very bad at foreign languages, and for some time now, a new generation of ambitious and unabashed directors, producers, editors who are passionate about American and Anglo-Saxon culture has opened the way. It feels good,” says Denis.

“I had the chance and opportunity to start off the video and commercial career of [director] Yoann Lemoine and his desire to go and work in London and the USA was much stronger than what I could have considered with the old French schemes,” reveals Denis. “He woke us up, and ever since then, Wanda has willingly committed to develop its talent in cool markets like Germany, the UK and even the US via Paranoid.”

Young French production outfit Division feels agencies need to consider that there is also a talented market of directors coming through in France. “We’ve had another great year on the music video side, and our commercials parent company, Les Télécréateurs, was production company of the year in France for the fifth time,” explains Jules de Chateleux, executive producer. “But there is one massive downside; for some unknown reason, French agencies don’t seem to notice that there is a new generation of directors emerging in our country.”

Something better beginning

Przespolewski’s partner at Fighting Fish, brand content producer Olivier Domerc believes that companies need to look to fill or even create new roles to adapt to new media platforms and the growing number of ways to tell stories. “With the complexity and breadth of advertising today, producers have to provide not only directors or programmers, but also writing talents,” he says, “they’re a creative resource as well, and one you don’t want to overlook.”

It’s a sentiment that Matthieu Elkaim, executive creative director at CLM BBDO Paris, and his creative directors Benjamin Marchal and Olivier Lefebvre echo, referring to their music video for ALB which saw a struggling artist sell all his personal belongings to fund his album using pop-up windows from eBay. “An advertising agency should be able to do this kind of stuff today and put our skills to something else to show we have an influence in solving creative problems,” they say. “We can do fantastic films, but now we need to try something else as well, invent and innovate. We try to show our clients every day and it’s really exciting. If you don’t do that now, you’re dead in five years.”

Notable campaigns from the team at CLM BBDO include La Redoute Naked Man, SmartCar and a billboard campaign for The Economist. “The playground is huge today; we’ve got a big toolbox full of new media and digital technology and we just need to use it.” As a result, the team presents genuine results proving their creative effectiveness.

BETC’s Stephane Xibberas clarifies that the traditional TVC will “absolutely” remain relevant, despite all of the talk of digital and new media. His agency proved it last year by winning the Film Craft Grand Prix in Cannes for Canal+ The Bear, but he still sees innovation and new forms as a vital step forward. “The digital wave rolled in over France at the right moment, when there was a need among French agencies to develop new business models,” says the co-president and ECD. “Many agencies here announced they were going through a ‘digital revolution’ both in terms of strategy and organisation. It was almost like a competition – who’s the most ‘digitally native’. BETC has always been an integrated, multi-faceted agency so breaking new ground feels natural. We always want to keep moving forward and find new ways of doing what we’re good at.”

When the grey fog above the Eiffel Tower will clear is anyone’s guess on a bleak day. One thing that is certain is that when night falls, its structure will sparkle through the murk and haze. It seems that, despite the ongoing crisis, traditional stubbornness and time constraints limiting experimentation, Parisian creativity is doing its best to shine through in uncertain but promising times. The feeling among the city’s creative elite is that the future’s bright for France, and the only way is forward.