by Stéphanie Gautier

Are you wandering what a French TV ad is? Is it law? Is it the way a certain subject is shown? Which are the most successful campaigns? Or how is it going to be evaluated? Read more…

Brief presentation

In France, the first TV advertising period goes back to1959, in which one of the first products was of course cheese (the brand Boursin)…but milk and clothing too! Two organisations manages on what brands could make, show, say and the way to do it: the Council Superior of Audiovision (CSA), an independent administrative authority since 1982 has the power to intervene after the first broadcasting and sanction whenever it is necessary (most often money punishment) and an, interprofessional organization (the BVP) created in 1990, which checks the conformity of the message with the payments and the professional practices. Although this last one only plays an advisory role, the professionals always make sure to take suggestions into consideration.
The spots last on average 21 seconds and according to the categories’ of the chains (nationals, cables, private) they are limited in time. Every one hour, no more than 8, 9 and 6 minutes (severally) of advertising cut. That is why during a movie we have just one ad cut instead of 3 or more like in others countries… We are lucky people!
The biggest advertisers are the brands of great consumption (food, washing powder…), of cars and of beauty products. The advertising agencies often use the same way to sell a product: great music, few dialogs, humour and sex. But the most successful ad campaigns are those which use humour!

Example of successful advertising campaign

This year, our information number (number you call when you want to ask for someone’s address or a telephone number …) which had the monopoly has disappeared due to the opening of the market …This market was estimated at 350 million Euros so it is not necessary to mention what a hard war it will be! Specialists said that the opening to the competition market of the telephone information would create a market whose shares would be divided in less than 100 days. And they were right! In three months every brands of telephony did their best to win market shares. But only some were able to dominate the market with a great reinforcement of their advertising campaigns. The big winner was 118 218. They played on humour and created two old-fashioned characters dancing to the rhythm of a music which became an anthem for the company.

If you want to see their ad you can go to http://www.lenumero.fr/films.html, you will find all the clips. Pay attention in France all our ads are in French but for this kind of topic you do not need to understand the dialogue…

Even for cheese advertisements we use humour! For “Boursin”, the scenario was: one man eats cheese in his garden while some moles are having fun playing football just in front of his eyes. However the cheese is so delicious that he does not see them. At the end we see his wife figuring out what had just happened and screaming… to watch the video click here.

French people like this kind of ad : original and funny! And for a brand it is very important to have a good ad campaign to succeed. But for some kind of mark or sector advertising is forbidden to appear on cut ad. These last times French laws become more flexibles…

Things are going to change!

In France there are some products completely forbidden of being advertised on TV like alcohol, tobacco, weapons (fortunately!), some medicine…and some business sectors too, for instance supermarket, press or legal careers. Supermarket areas were able to appear on TV but just as sponsors, which was not so good for them in terms of selling their product. The change will arrive on the 1st January 2007! Until now they just have the right to be partners of programs (and they did a lot…) but from 2007 it will develop. They will soon make TV ad!!! This change is going to modify the environment of the advertising business. Indeed Supermarkets are powerful advertisers and they are already fought on the radios and in the press’ ads, so one can imagine how rough the battle will be on TV! It is not the only change in the French TV ads.
For one year now, the edition and the press are authorized to advertise. The press magazines enjoy appearing on TV and they do it a lot! Every cut we have an announcement: Brad Pitt hesitates between Angelina and Jennifer. Who will he choose? There is another commercial where Cameron Diaz has acne, which is used to advertise “Closer”, where you can get to know all the Hollywood stars’ secrets “ .However, after watching and hearing these commercials in three different channels, one starts wondering if the changes are good…