OUIGO's Latest Ad Is an Ode to the Resourcefulness of Twenty-Somethings
When you were 20, did you nick glasses from bars, load up on ketchup packets each time you went to McDonald’s, forage endlessly for change so you could put petrol in your car, pick up that three-legged table someone put out for trash collection, borrow your neighbour's wifi, eat more ramen than you’d like to remember or maybe have to cover that run in your stocking with a marker? If so, then OUIGO has a message for you.
Because when you’re 20, in life or in your mind, you have the freedom to move around, you want to live your life to the full and use your money for the things that really matter. That’s why French train system OUIGO is offering the possibility to travel by high-speed starting at €19.
To promote this idea, OUIGO and its agency Rosapark wanted to create a film that serves as an ode to this shared philosophy of life.
The film follows the daily life of three students who go about life in a simple, easy, effortless, and clever manner. They are kings and queens of resourcefulness; everything around them takes on a second meaning in their eyes; an iron becomes a raclette grill, a tennis racket a strainer, a toaster a stove, a black marker turns an old stocking into a new one.
Alice Moitié directed the film, represented at Iconoclast Image for her talents as a photographer and at Standard for her work as a video director.
The music chosen for this film, "Hier Encore" by Charles Aznavour, the highly-revered French crooner who passed away last year, gives the film a poetic ambiance, a touch of nostalgia, and, above all, is a transgenerational ode to youth. You can be listed as 40 on a passport, but always be 20 in your head - there is no age to take a OUIGO.
The film’s objective is to make choosing OUIGO a reflex for the younger audience, who make up 40% of customers, by promoting new routes to destinations that appeal particularly to the young in France, such as Toulouse (the top city for students in France, according to a 2018 ranking put out by the magazine L'Etudiant). It’s a way of reinforcing the brand's positioning, to give as many people as possible the power to travel.
The film launches May 16 on the brand's social networks, Facebook, Instagram, in truview on YouTube, and in first view on Twitter with the hashtag #JeSuisUnGénieQuand (#II’m a genius when), where users can share their crafty cost-saving measures. An influencer campaign will also be led in order to reach this core target.
