rants: | previous rants | the other ads | pointless comments

Here follows my rather brutalised account of many of Renault's advertising campaigns over previous years, at least 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. This page has later been updated with links to many of the videos.

---

Papa & Nicole

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.... aahh 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 café 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 Nicole 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, the tables were turned when she instead found herself escorting him 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.

---

Hiatus of hate

What followed for the next few years I'm not sure, this being the era 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 persisted for years following, but was later recategorized as an ironic post-millennial retrospective of all that is deservingly rubbish for survivors of the Thatcherite generation in the crumby existence otherwise known as Britain.

---

Hippy happy

So, then 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, daisies, happy animals, blonde tarts and fresh mountain air.... hang on, was that Renault or was it Citroën, or somebody else? An effective campaign that must have been.

---

Organ Grinder's Fling

Then came the advert I panned so flamboyantly on my main 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?

---

Return via the scenic route

Quite what the next ad was all about is anyone's guess. I never paid enough attention to grasp it. In brief, 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.

---

Créateurs d'auto-modèles

After all the high-profile campaigns of the past, Renault next resorted to a more bland, unmemorable effort that they obviously regarded 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 new, sleek black Renault that 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 was 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 ended with their customary metallic swish effect revealing the company name or slogan beneath the logo. This time it was 'Créateurs d'Automobiles'. Oh, la-de-dah, how French, how culturelle, how.... je ne sais quoi!

---

Slow Mover

Eh? 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. 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 recall too well. Futuristic, eh? (You mean, you don't remember?)

---

Ha ha hmmm....

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 that I wouldn't know where to begin. Claiming first and second places for utter crap, however, are without doubt Ford and Peugeot, with their frighteningly smug and revolting adverts. They 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 one 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 is 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 would 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 Seventies 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 'ahh, 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, on the outskirts of Luton, on their way to Sainsbury's, and somehow I feel the effect will have 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.

---

Bringing up the rear

Update 2011-05-04: Just realised I'd never mentioned one of Renault's most memorable campaigns, which must have slotted in somewhere around here in the order of things. The actors involved in this one were quite literally a bunch of arses!

---

Rolling in the mud

I've just been amazed to find that it's almost a whole five years since any of the pages in this Rants section were last touched by either human hand or my almighty gob. But finally, here in summer 2008, the time has come to make one more yacking entry if only to show that no degenerative oral disease has yet taken hold of me.

My decision has been prompted following the unlikely and unexpected occurrence of Renault producing no ordinary TV commercial for their most current model. The new Koleos is thrust upon the world (or at least upon those of us in the UK) as the latest addition in Renault's modern fleet of nouvelles automobiles, yet they couldn't help calling upon the services of an old acquaintance and member of the family to try and help ease its introduction to the nation. I can of course be talking only of the dear, beloved Renault 4 (plus an assortment of other Renault oldies thrown in for good measure). It is the 4, however, that has the starring role and which is the only classic featured prominently in subsequent abbreviated versions of the advert that have gone to air. For those of you who may have missed this spectacle, and who struggle to locate or view it on such new-fangled gizmos as YouTube, I shall provide a brief summary:

Following a few flickering, silent moments of black and white footage of some vintage vehicles, a Renault 4 is seen approaching up a mud track, to the accompaniment of the final refrains of The Rolling Stones' I'm Free (To Do What I Want, Any Old Time). As the 4 becomes grounded in the dirt, a guy attempting to push the car free is sprayed chocolate brown by the mess of the wheelspin. There follows a selection of other old Renault cars trying to defy the odds by navigating across a snowy mountain top, through a reasonably deep river and across sand dunes, with an assortment of passenger characters ranging from a very 1970s-looking family in their bright orange R5 to a long-haired shaggy dog caked in dripping mud. A quick flash through the front grille diamond motifs of these cars acts as a sort of Life Flashing Before You If You're A Renault Bonnet Repair Technician Having A Near-Death Experience retrospective, whereafter an original Espace and a Twingo surrounded by sheep complete the line-up of popular Renaults past. A caption appears, pronouncing 'The Spirit of Renault - Now in a 4x4', and we witness a series of images of this strange new beast, the Koleos, charging its way along a bumpy track with full family on board. It pulls up alongside the guy still pushing his filthy Renault 4, and the final scene sees the R4 being towed off by the new wonder-vehicle, to the backdrop of an ever-so-slightly smug announcer's voice, declaring 'The Renault Koleos. 4x4 outside. Renault inside.'

Now, you might think that for once I'll be over the moon at this final admission by the Renault of today, that the 4 is still an important force and guiding factor in the automobile market of 2008, some fifteen years after the last Fours left the factory floors. Well, I'm hardly going to damn Renault for its inclusion, besides which it's not the first time they have given credence to this notion about the car. Some years ago, for example, they redesigned their main renault.com website with a wealth of nostalgic information covering the R4 and several other classic models. Now, at precisely a minute long, the publicity afforded to the 4 in this ad is approximately thirteen seconds on each screening, which is a lot in today's advertising society where thousands of products and services flash before our eyes daily for often a split second each. It's not quite up to Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes, but it's good enough.

I do have some reservations, however, about the manner in which the car's image is incorporated. The overriding idea might be to show how fun-loving Renault owners of yesteryear have thrown caution to the wind and done everything within their power to use their cars off-road, whilst the new Koleos simply manages this task at last, by virtue of its design. Yet, there is a secondary theme running in parallel to this, suggesting that all those other cars were somehow incapable of achieving this feat, and even today, those that still survive invariably fall victim to their owners' misguided exploits if faced with a diversionary spell away from the tarmac. In fact, most Renault 4 owners would argue that quite the opposite is the reality, and indeed Renault themselves seemed to contradict their current beliefs when they ran a French commercial back in 1973, as can be found here on the film pages of this site. Remember that delightful reel of scenes depicting the R4 atop a mountain as the postman collects his load from the box on the edge of a snowy precipice? The R4's boot being used by a circus act to carry a crocodile? (I've never been entirely sure quite what that particular scene was about. It may be only a large fish carried by a gentleman with a rather unfortunate hairstyle, or lack of such). And the car cascading down a narrow, steep staircase having set sail across the sandy, slushy straits of the north coast for Mont St. Michel? If you don't, I suggest you check it out to see for yourself just how Renault perceived our favourite Four as the simple off-road solution of the Seventies.

So what are they saying now? That they were kidding us all along? It's somewhat reminiscent of the endless ads that come along every few years for a new bathroom or oven-scouring product, in which a split screen portrays previous products as being basically incompetent at removing grime when matched up against the gleaming new glory cream or foam now on offer. Such campaigns can be traced back decades, when those very same inferior cleaners were marketed themselves as the great chore-saving hassle-free wipe-away cure-all cleaning products of the time. Do they assume us to have the minds of little more than goldfish?¹

Many a partial commentator would suggest that a few years hence, it will be the last surviving legends of Renault 4s that shall instead be towing such cars as the Koleos when the latter either break down, or their supply of parts runs dry due to far less sales demand and their short lifetime, in comparison to the Four. If I were a cynic, I'd sympathise with such sentiments. Hold on, I am a cynic! Oh well then, no need for further commentary.

But just to be fair in all of this, Renault could certainly have chosen to ignore their history, as the majority of other car manufacturers do. Instead, they've given us all a little surprise and a reminder that the spirit of Renault is indeed still alive.

¹ As has now been proven in several scientific studies, goldfish do not in fact have short memory spans of just a few seconds. This is just a popular misconception. Nonetheless, the typical memory span and indeed lifespan of a goldfish is of such significantly shorter duration than that of an average human so as to render this point still valid.

---

* I don't live in a tower block any more. So sue me!

rants: | previous rants | the other ads | pointless comments