Behind the Babies with BETC

Last week, a fresh crop of young hotstepping talent was unleashed onto our screens via French agency BETC Paris and Iconoclast directors We Are From LA for the latest instalment of the French agency’s iconic baby-themed Evian campaign. Following successful commercials for the brand – Roller Babies and Baby Inside – the new ad, Baby & Me, builds on the previous spots with adults being startled by younger versions of themselves in a shop window and just days after its release the film has hit the top of the online virals chart proving another hit for the agency.

Here, Remi Babinet, founder, chairman and ECD at BETC on the job, talks about casting over 400 babies for the shoot, soaking up positive pressure and looking beyond cute gimmicks for the campaign.

Where do you start when planning a follow up to the previous spots, which have received so much success?

The babies are still a central part of the creation – Evian has always been the water that is distributed in nurseries and the one that mothers give their new born children. It was a natural choice to stay with the babies as they represent the very core of Evian’s values. With this in mind, they’re a lot more than just a cute gimmick.

And how did the mirror idea come about?

We thought that it would be so much fun to have a baby ‘me’, a little baby that would move and imitate its adult double. Of course, we thought of lots of different ways of how to get the babies to meet their adult selves but figured a mirror would be the perfect, not too cheesy solution.

Was the soundtrack easy to select? Did you always want to keep the hip-hop vibe?

As always in Evian’s advertising, the music plays a central role. After having remixed a rock track (We will rock you, for the Voices Evian ad in 2003 that ended up topping the charts and going platinum), and a hip hop track (Rappers Delight for Roller Babies) we wanted something new and different with a good beat.

Here comes the Hotstepper was an obvious choice – it’s a cult tune, just between hip-hop and dance music which made it a perfect transition from previous campaigns to Baby & Me. We also love how universal the chorus is with its “na-na-na-na-na-” – that was one of the things that made it really interesting for us.

Tell us about the shoot… Was it hard to get the right reactions from the actors considering they couldn’t see the babies?

That part was a real challenge actually. We started by filming the babies. As there were certain expressions we really wanted them to make we tried to direct them as much as you can direct a baby. Next, we filmed the adults when they tried to imitate “their” babies – first on the street, facing the mirror. Then on a green screen, wearing baby costumes to simulate the proportions of real baby bodies.

Tell us about the new challenges you faced in contrast to Roller Babies, which didn’t feature adults at all…

A real challenge in this case was the casting – we cast more than 400 babies to find a good match between adults and babies that looked alike. As for the adult actors, it proved harder than expected to imitate the babies’ movements and expressions. But at least they do what you ask them to, which is more than can be said for the babies…

Roller Babies proved a phenomenal success; how much pressure did you feel when creating a new slant on it?

Only positive pressure – we always have a lot of fun and work in quite a spontaneous way.

And was it a conscious decision to include actors of all different ages to communicate the message? Tell us about that…

Absolutely. With Baby & Me, Evian seeks to spread its Live Young message everywhere, all over the world and to reaffirm the brand’s vision of youth. That is – youth is not a question of age nor looks but attitudes towards life and to, like a child, keep openness about the unexpected.