Paul from Paris

Last week, an ad campaign made front-page news. Widely reported in France –in the press, on television– the story was soon carried in papers of record abroad.

The campaign consisted of a series of visuals that depicted young people, male and female, engaged in a sex act with an older man.

The campaign purportedly showed that using tobacco is a sign of submission and naïveté, illustrated by the tag line: to smoke is to be a slave to tobacco.

Who are they trying to kid? That was my initial reaction. My thinking: the message would persuade none but offend many (if only because the association with tobacco and pedophilia makes sex play look bad).

Indeed, French health minister Roselyne Bachelot called the campaign “inappropriate” and “counter-productive”, and junior minister for family affairs Nadine Morano said the campaign was “profoundly shocking and intolerable”.

Advertising is a self-regulating profession in France; its regulator, commonly called by its acronym, ARPP, promptly discovered that the campaign violated several guidelines advertisers are supposed to follow (about visuals that are degrading or humiliating, or that show domination or exploitation).

The campaign turned out to be a bluff, an effort to generate buzz. As ARPP’s director general was reported as saying in Le Monde, “There was no advertising campaign.” According to the campaign’s organizer, “This campaign was never intended to be massively shown to the general public.” A pseudo-campaign, it recalls individuals efforts to generate buzz with phantom campaigns.

Seen through the dust of controversy, the most recent remarks seem to be not totally accurate. The ARPP’s general director, as reported by Le Monde, points out that “15,000 cards [with campaign images] were distributed in Paris area bars and nightclubs”; the same article mentions that campaign ads were carried in Entrevue and Choc, two publications that court controversy and adult readers. And there is no wider audience than front-page or prime-time news.

Incentives influence market choices.

This statement should be unexceptional, hardly newsworthy. But an onslaught of end-of-the-year news reports in France suggests otherwise.

More than 2.2 new passenger cars will be sold in France in 2009. This figure is up from a recent average of 2.0-2.1 million vehicles. It ties sales in 2001 (2.25 million), and approaches sales in 1990 (2.3 million).

Sales are up for all French automakers, with double-digit jumps in December sales compared to same-period sales in 2008.

Incentives have everything to do with this.

France has a cash for clunkers program: for cars more than 10 years old, and provided that the beneficiary buy a new car by 31 December 2009 (it being understood that the new vehicle can be delivered later, in 2010), the beneficiary will receive € 1,000. About 570,000 people are expected to benefit from the program in 2009. Starting 1 January 2010, the amount of the payment will fall to € 700.

France also has a sliding-scale, ecological bonus-malus program: cars that emit little CO2 are entitled to a bonus (usually from 200 to 1,000 euros); those that emit more than 130g CO2/km are subject to an eco-tax. CO2 emissions are a proxy for fuel efficiency, so the measure also favors fuel-efficient cars. Although originally presented as tax-neutral, car buyers have strongly favored smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles.

Finally, car-makers have added additional “bonuses” or price cuts that match or multiply the state-run programs.

With all these incentives, I’m not surprised that new-car sales in France have risen in 2009. But some questions remain:

• What will be the effect of the €300 drop in payments effective 1 January 2010? In France, cash for clunkers isn’t an all or nothing proposition; the payment amount will drop gradually. The ecological bonus-malus system will be fine-tuned but will stay in place. Few new cars sell for less than € 6,000, so the €300 drop represents a price change of less than 5%: for a small car selling for € 9,000, the dip represents 3%. Is this amount really enough to drive consumer choices?
• What price effect have the state-run programs had on new-car spending? Do consumers decide, beforehand, to spend a predetermined amount (for example, € 15,000), then bargain for the most car they can get at that price? In which case, have automakers been able to move buyers towards marginally more expensive vehicles (for example, a € 16,500 car), or vehicles with more options (for example, a special interior treatment priced at € 1,000)?
• Why do so many consumers wait until the end of the bonus period before they buy a car? One could just as easily expect an uptick in sales towards the beginning of the year, when bonuses are paid; or in the autumn, when new-model cars come out. Are consumers saving up? Have they considered the new car as a Christmas present?
• How many consumers behave opportunistically? Under the French plan, a beneficiary must hold title to an old vehicle for at least six months before she benefits from the program. Have families arranged for the 85-year-old grandmother to transfer her old car to her 25-year-old granddaughter, in order to help the granddaughter to buy a new vehicle? More fancifully, have families been trying to insure out-of-commission clunkers sitting on cinder blocks in a garage?
• What do plans to help the automotive sector reveal or hide about consumer spending generally? Is consumer spending up, or is it down; and how much do changes in automotive spending account for the broader change in consumer spending? For instance, when consumers buy a new car, do they cut their beer and pretzel budget? Or is the purchase of a new car a marker of renewed or buoyant consumer confidence (with beer and pretzel sales remaining strong)? If consumers are making trade-offs when they buy a new automobile, what purchases do they cut back?

The Paris regional tourism authority commissioned French director Yvan Atal to make a promotional video. The result is a music video that riffs on “Before Sunrise“, with a pair of lovers who love Paris. I like it, for seven reasons:

1. It features young people. I don’t know if they’re meant to be real young people, or the way older people imagine younger people today; in other words, whether the spot targets youth or nostalgics. Maybe both.
2. Spending money is not the main reason to come to Paris. It’s not all about shopping. Of course, there are nice restaurants and the puces de Saint-Ouen, but there are also up-and-coming neighborhoods and public transportation.
3. It’s not a pub crawl. There’s not a drop of alcohol in sight.
4. It’s not a group tour. The film shows Paris to be a place where you can come alone and meet someone. It turns stereotypes about uptight, disagreeable Parisians on their head. And it’s safe for solo travelers.
5. You can speak English in Paris. No problem with accents or grammar. This is smart: far more Europeans speak English than French.
6. The video shows Paris as culturally rich but subverts traditional guides. Culture, a collective good, is shown to be an excellent backdrop for more intimate experiences, such as kissing. And the culture is accommodating: you can kiss all the time, everywhere, and no one minds.
7. Paris is a great destination for a weekend. Carpe diem! Seize the moment, live intensely. You won’t want to leave, but you’ll remember. And you can come back.

Much as I liked the film, Rufus Wainwright‘s music turned me off. I thought the song, and indie-sounding composition itself about Paris, was loud and superfluous. Dialogue and sound effects would have been enough. Does Paris need promotion? Yes. It’s important to engage viewers with a vision of Paris that isn’t: what your parents saw, what you did the last time you visited, or what your friends told you that they did.

Earlier this year, a French web site claimed to offer a service that would complete schoolchildren’s homework, for a fee. That effort turned out to be a marketing exercise: no homework was ever actually paid for. But the effort received extensive media coverage, and its creators have a good story to tell in job interviews.

I suspect that a recent initiative from Denmark had a similar end, for example measuring the propagation of buzz or demonstrating how much noise creative types could produce on short notice.

Whatever the end, the means were bizarre. The Danish tourist authority set up a web site and posted a video on YouTube in which an attractive Danish woman, Karen, presented her infant son, August. She wanted to show the child to the man who conceived him, a casual acquaintance with whom she had unprotected intercourse after a night’s drinking. Dorte Killerich of the Danish tourist authority reportedly called the initiative “the most effective thing we have ever done to market Denmark.”

The Danish media reported on the initiative and showed it to be fake. The site and the video were soon taken down.