This ad campaign featuring American Gothic with a few words pasted on, like edited on the fly with WhatsApp or Canva, is all over central Paris. I hate it. Quick takes.
I nearly fell off my bike in disbelief when my personal WTF meter suddenly shot up with an alert from the corner of my eyes as I saw it last week.
I mean maybe I’m not the target, but it is all over central Paris, in my neighbourhood, so I guess I am the target, or adjacent.
Some are sipping rosé in Cannes, judging arguably the best pieces of advertising and brand communications in the world, while Parisians and American tourists get this kind of ad.
For English speakers, the title reads: “When you have never visited BÉZIERS.”
In the middle, American Gothic, a 1930 painting by Grant Wood, one of most famous American pieces of 20th century art, that I’ve had the chance of seeing several times at Art Institute of Chicago. It has been used in parody and satire many times too.
And at the bottom: “Feria (party), illuminations, light & sound show… Summer 2024 will be magic in Béziers!”
Let’s imagine a Parisian audience case first.
Say someone sees it, is educated, with enough money to live in central Paris, and/or a student given it’s also around where many of the universities are (all around La Sorbonne Université).
Béziers is a town in the South of France, near the Mediterranean coast, on the way to Barcelona.
If the person who sees it is vaguely familiar with politics, Béziers’s mayor Robert Ménard might come to mind, technically independent though supported and supporting the extreme right party in France (You may have heard the extreme right got 40% of the European elections vote and president Macron just called a sudden snap election).
He’s against same-sex mariage, wants to reinstate Catholic religion in schools, and the last ad campaign of his I remember featured a close shot of the new guns he armed the local police with.
Back to the Parisian passer-by, they might be confused because they’d have thought the people in the painting are in fact the people from Béziers who voted for that mayor.
That’s not nice to the people in the painting though.
The main wannabe funny message doesn’t land.
Case 2, maybe more common: passer-by sees Béziers, knows it’s a South of France town. Famous painting. Serious old school people, sour faces.
Slight confusion, even thinking the additional step of reverse psychology has little to no payoff.
Stop paying attention, if they ever have.
Case 3, American tourist: What’s Béziers and why is that famous painting there? An expo?
All that’s being generous imagining people are giving it any thought.
Anyhow, I hate it because it’s not saying anything memorable about Béziers, or anything at all.
Other towns in the South of France and everywhere have parties and light shows in the summer.
American Gothic is way, way more famous (more brand recognition) than Béziers so it’s already a shot in the foot.
Qui c’est qui a fait ça ?
