As much as the people of France complain about the infiltration of American corporate and popular culture onto the French landscape and into the French lifestyle (consider that there are now five McDonalds restaurants and thirty-four Starbucks locations in the city of Paris), it's more than a little surprising to see the expansive new advertising campaign that French automaker Renault and American media giant Twentieth Century Fox (via Renault's ad agency, Publicis Conseil) have concocted.
Set to air in twenty-nine countries, mostly throughout Europe, the ads — print (above) and broadcast (after the break) — feature that most quintessentially American of families, the Simpsons (or Les Simpson, as they're known over there), extolling the virtues of the new Kangoo multipurpose vehicle.
Now, the ultimate-family-meets-ultimate-family-vehicle aspect we can appreciate, but ... The Simpsons? Isn't this the show that famously derided the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" and intimated they spike their wine with antifreeze? How can these characters be popular enough in France to sell cars?
But perhaps it's not popularity at all that motivates these ads, but rather a kind of gorillas-and-Samsonite torture-test theory of advertising. If the new Kangoo can survive these fat Americans and their monstrous children, the ads suggest, it can survive your family.
Watch Les Simpson meet Renault's Kangoo, after the break.
Photo courtesy of Renault and Twentieth Century Fox.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk5JNnOfZY4
