Making a Very French Ad without a Word of French
There are lots of ways French pasta brand Lustucru could have demonstrated that its pasta is the best. It could have organised tastings in a Parisian grocery store, it could have showed off its recycling centres to demonstrate how unique the brand’s 100% paper packaging is. They could have asked real Italians whether they preferred linguine or the more French pasta shape, coquillettes.
But Lustucru preferred to revive the irreverent, even slightly punk, but still contemporary, side of its brand, imagining a campaign in Korean, German and Spanish to draw attention to the fact that it’s 100% French and has been since 1911.
This message is delivered through a campaign full of self-mockery and criticism of advertising excesses, created by agency Artefact 3000. The film’s direction by DUPER is complemented by deepfake technology, which adapts the mouth movements of the lead actor to those of foreign actors who have dubbed the dialogue in the other languages.
LBB’s Alex Reeves caught up with director DUPER and Edouard Bonnet, chairman, founder and executive producer at production company De Gaulle to hear about how this uniquely French comic idea came to life.
LBB> What was the script like when you both first saw it?
DUPER> At the very beginning, the script was about repeating the same ad in three foreign languages, but with a slightly different creative mechanic. The father's quote was: “Dinner is ready! Hmmmm the good pasta!” with the foreign Lustucru logo at the end. The reveal catchline was: “As we are 100% French, we are Lustucru.”
LBB> What did you think about it?
DUPER> Cool and really ballsy to not say a word in French to sell the Frenchness of a product!
Edouard> It’s quite rare to receive this kind of script in France, especially for an FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) brand. We were clearly in front of a UFO and you don’t have the opportunity to make this kind of film twice a year. We had to fully play the game to ensure the idea would remain as weird as it was initially written. Actually it was hard to believe that this very film for this very brand would ever be released… until it’s been released. It was a perfect script to launch a concept-centric director like DUPER. Right place, right moment.
LBB> What were your initial thoughts on how to make it particularly funny where it needs to be?
DUPER> I liked the idea but I quickly thought the reveal wasn’t strong enough to make people laugh. Frenchness is something every French brand has been saying for the past few years… So apart from hearing three foreign languages on French TV, the dialogue seemed too normal and maybe boring, so we needed to link those three ads around something more fun. We went back to work with the creative team Margaux Ferrand and Julie Cointy and came back with a rewritten script that was more meta, more “behind the brand speech.”
The mechanic became: “If we were German, we would have been called…”, “If we were Spanish… Korean…, etc.”. That way, we were sure people would follow us till the reveal. Also, the father was also now directly speaking to the audience which broke the fourth wall and brought a meta spirit to the idea which I love.
Edouard> The concept was here. Already strong and surprising but there was still a lot to define. The real challenge, as said before, was to create a very singular and weird piece of film and, at the same time, keep the client ‘alive’. First, we had to define the genre, the way we would treat it (should we have to use super traditional commercial codes or imagine something else?). And more than that, it needed something more. Something that would bind the sequences and make the whole film smoother and weirder. And this is how we got to the sequence shot and deepfake tricks.
LBB> Can you talk us through the production design and styling? It's definitely a pastiche of commercials we're all very familiar with.
DUPER> ‘Frenchness, made in France’ is THE message we hear from every French brand for the past five years. Lustucru had a really funny and even punk spirit from 1980 to the 2000s, that’s how we have sold them to pastiche other VERY French brands’ commercials. The set design, casting and styling were close to a French version of the ‘Geico Family pre-roll ad’. The sequence shot was a test, I thought it would bring even more parody to the parody, something absurd and unreal, amplified by the deepfake trick - and it worked, lucky me!
Edouard> The pastiche was a great way to express self-mockery. Once again, we wanted to fully play the game and it’s very rare to see a brand using self-mockery to make its own promotion. It allowed us to give the brand a higher point of view. Moreover when this brand has almost invented these very advertising codes in the French market.
LBB> The pasta is 100% French and proud of it. How would you say Frenchness comes through in this style of advertising?
Duper> We brought French humour to the table, a mix of realism, irreverence and self-mockery.
LBB> Finally, what are you most proud of in the finished campaign and why?
Duper> People laugh.
Edouard> Thinking of my grandmother in front of her TV, waiting for her movie to start, bored by the endless TVC tunnel, woken up by a Korean-speaking commercial talking about French pasta.
