the renault ads

Here follows my rather brutalised account of Renault's many advertising campaigns over the last few years in the UK. And before anybody utters the word 'lawyer', I should point out that all opinions expressed here are the subjective views of one little man in a tower block, and are not backed up by multi-million pound production techniques.

I can't remember all the ad campaigns Renault have forced upon us in the UK over recent times, but certainly the first that sticks out, and by far the most memorable, was the 'Papa......Nicole......Aaahh' drama that unfolded engagingly for a few years on our screens. This consisted of some admittedly attractive French girl called Nicole and her cosmopolitan exploits during her teenage years; sipping espressos in the trendy town square cafe bar, dancing in and out of the posh family home in the summer breeze, meeting cheerful friends, acquaintances and boyfriends, going for her big city company job interview, indulging in leather fetishes.......well that last one might have just been in my head, but you get the idea. And her ever-present father, affectionately referred to in a stereotypical French way as 'papa' at every opportunity, who escorted her about her duties in the family Renault, stealing sly glances at his daughter's legs on the passenger seat as he drove. And of course then the tables were turned when she found herself escorting him instead when she came of driving age, and probably gained that job in a faceless corporation due to papa's links in the business world. Well it's all a bit vague now in my mind, but you get the gist of it.

What followed for the next few years I'm not sure, this is when I started to become bitter and cynical about everything, so I would have casually disregarded television commercials whilst still mouthing off about them, and spent my time forming images of hell, daggers, eternal blackness and Noel Edmonds in my angry little mind. This condition still exists in me to the present day, but has since been re-categorized as an ironic post millennial retrospective of all that is deservingly rubbish for survivors of the Thatcherite generation in this crumby existence called Britain, or something.

So then a couple of years ago came the annoying hippie exploits of some blonde tart leaping around on a hill, surrounded by jumping bunnies, brightly-coloured flowers and the happy clappy jingly jangly soundtrack of the Lightning Seeds in an effort to explain that this car could not only take you up into the peaks and closer to heaven, but also to some desperate corporate vision of a green idyllic environmentally sound enclave, surrounded by great friends, blonde tarts, daisies, happy animals and fresh mountain air......hang on, was that Renault or was it Citroen, or somebody else? An effective campaign that must have been.

Then came the advert I panned so flamboyantly on my rants page, with the frustrated posh woman who goes around smashing vases, flinging plates against the wall, destroying furniture and striking pianos with a hammer, accompanied by a callous re-hash of a fantastic Jimmy Smith track. The next Renault, or a bad case of PMT?

Quite what the next ad was all about is anyone's guess. I never quite paid enough attention to grasp it. It was for the Renault Scenic, and involved chatter amongst the upper classes, the word 'vegetarian' thrown in somewhere, some leaves in a river, and the catchphrase 'Change Your Scenery' finishing it off. But at this time I was too busy making this site more enjoyable for you pretty people to turn my gaze to the TV screen for more than a few seconds, sorry. Whatever it was about, it can't have been all that successful (I allege) because they then reverted to a revamped version of the previous ad with the angry woman; must be that time of the month again.

After all the high-profile campaigns of the past, they've now resorted to a more bland unmemorable effort, which they obviously regard as a bit clever. Starting with a fashion designer sketching a new idea, featuring Jean-Paul Gaultier, and following this idea to fruition, a model stalks out of a building and admires some sleek black new Renault which appears to be kerb-crawling her. Then the focus switches to the car, and the process of its manufacture and design is shown in reverse, along with a reversed soundtrack, right back to the point where the initial sketch was made on paper, as with the model's outfit. In some horrible capitalist way I think it's trying to imply that was the moment where objects of beauty and desire meet up, and that we should all aspire to own this car because it will turn us into beautiful people. Anyway, it ends with their now customary metallic swish effect revealing the company name or slogan beneath the logo. This time it's 'createurs d'automobiles'. Oh la-de-dah, oh how French, oh how culturelle, oh how........je ne sais quoi......!

Uerh?! What was that, did you see something? I'm sure I just spotted something, oh never mind, probably just a loose heron holding a Tupperware party. Oh hang on a minute, it was a new Renault advert, I almost missed it, must have been that interesting. Well okay, although I can't say as I paid that much attention, the last commercial for the Renault Laguna wasn't that offensive, partly because it was so unnoticeable. It was accompanied by some electro beat and showed the car set against a nocturnal urban backdrop with some kind of slow shutter lens, to produce a blurred image and that well known headlight streaking effect. I think the caption may have been 'moving technology' but I really don't remember that well. Futuristic eh?

It's quite a while since I updated these pages with my latest assault on TV ads or anything else. To be honest, some of the recent car commercials on TV are so awful I wouldn't know where to begin. Claiming first and second places for utter crap though are without doubt Ford and Peugeot, with their frighteningly smug and revolting adverts, which feature amongst other things a voiceover from a person you want to punch repeatedly, more dreadful M-People god bless this land and the human spirit soundtracks (excuse me while I vomit), and the simply untrue assurances that new cars are so safe your child could drive it off a cliff and get out laughing.

Renault meanwhile have part relied on an extension of the 'change your scenery' catchphrase as featured in a previous ad. This time it's another rather annoying attempt to appeal to people of all different creeds and origins, only the token wheelchair was missing. It features various diverse groups of people and their unlikely singalong favourites, as they travel along in the Renault Scenic. Such as ballet dancers who headbutt to grunge music or something. I'm sure that's wrong actually because I haven't paid enough attention, but you get the idea, ha bloody ha, I'm wetting myself. The people who buy those cars must feel like they belong to such a glorious global community of extrovert oddballs, well at least they think that as they drive home from their job at the estate agents in Surbiton.

And then of course there was the new Clio commercial, where Renault really believed we'd all latch onto their trendy catchphrase 'va va voom', and we'd credit them for introducing this hilarious sexy Frenchism into our popular culture. Well here's one they can introduce back into France - 'sod sod off'. No I'm not trying to be nasty to the French, I've got nothing against them (except that GCSE Tricolore Book 4B featuring 70's throwback Jean-Paul and his exploits in the suburbs of La Rochelle, there was no excuse for that).

The problem with this ad was that it was a bit unfair - the Clio model it featured came with a pink flashing light on the top as it drove around the atmospheric urban downtown streets, and it makes people think 'oh look at that little car how cute I'll have one'. But then they find themselves driving around in a Clio without a pink flashing light on the top around the outskirts of Luton on their way to Sainsbury's, and somehow I feel the effect has been lost somewhere. If you really did drive around with a pink light you'd either be mistaken for advertising a local brothel and trailed by several sweaty and rather excited men, or followed by a police car and forced to pull into the nearest layby by two sweaty and rather excited men.

Tune in (literally) for more later. Click here to return to the rants index.

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