Paris is the site of one of the world’s most beautiful cities, becoming the French capital for romance, cuisine, and culture. It is also home to thriving film, television, for our purposes, advertising production companies, each delivering distinctive adverts for France and continental Europe. Whether it’s the boutique firms or the largest mainstream companies, Parisian sensibilities are intertwined with the work that they create, marking for truly unique adverts. At right.video, we wanted to tip our hats to our home city and show off the best advert production companies calling Paris home. We’ve no doubt that if you’re ever in Paris, you can be well assured that you’ll find the perfect creative partner to make your vision a reality.
Director: Robert Rodriquez
Client: Rémy Martin
Agency: Fred & Farid
We wanted to start off with Moonwalk Films, based in the heart of Paris’ 10th arrondissement. Famed for its international sensibilities, we wanted to highlight its distinction for creating an advert that no one, not you nor I, will be seeing any time soon. Masterminded by director Robert Rodriquez and starting John Malkovich, “100 Years” is designed to be a short, sci-fi film created for Remy Martin’s Louis XIII cognac. Like the preparation for the cognac, the short won’t be released until 2115, but the mere existence of the short and its available clips led to industry recognition in 2016, earning a Clio Grand prize in the process.
Director: Matthijs Heijningen
Client: Canal
Agency: BETC, Paris
Soixante Quinze boasts, in its own words, that it’s home to ‘badass’ creative directors and photographers, creating engrossing photo shoots and ads while racking up rewards. It’s not an unfounded boast as evidenced in this 2012 Clio Gold winner, “The Bear”. Presented as the documentary of a historical war film, it’s centered on a living bear rug that caught the film bug and set out to become a film director. It’s tribute to the magic of cinema, poking fun at the diva director while making you fall in love with the medium all over again.
Director: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet
Client: Canal
Agency: BETC Paris
Partizan perhaps has the most extensive range of production facilities on our list, not only specializing in advertising, but film, television, and short films. All of these disciplines are on rich display for this advert for French television giant Canal+. Recalling films like Oblivion with a dash of Lord of the Rings, “The Stone” is a suitably epic advert that could pass for its own movie, highlighting the quest to send a signal to Canal’s set top box. With blockbuster-like production values, the advert earned Partizan the Clio Silver award in 2015 and was shortlisted for the Cannes Lions in 2016.
Director: Seb Edwards
Client: Lacoste Paris
Agency: BETC Paris
One of the most critically successful of French advertising production houses, Wanda was founded in 1991 with a commitment to highly-detailed adverts by the best directors they could possibly find. It’s this impossibly high-standard that is reached in this advert for Lacoste, earning a Clio Silver Award back in 2014. “The Big Leap”, as the advert is suitably called, describes the high-scales emotions one goes through when going in for the first kiss. Rich in visual metaphor, its a spot that beautifully illustrates the high-stakes in life and its rewards.
Director: Cedric Dubourg
Client: Deliveroo
Agency: Chime360
Our sister company, Left Productions is an agency whose goal is to liberate creativity for the video industry, focusing its prowess on music videos, TV, and advertising. Much of that creativity and influence can be found in this advert for the French division of Deliveroo from 2019. Showing off the nighttime streets of Paris, “Ride with Us” captures the hectic work that comes from Deliveroo riders with pure kinetic energy.
Director: Alex Grossman
Client: Cine-Club/Alliance Française
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather
France has the proud distinction of being the birthplace of film, ushering in a new medium with the creation of the Cinématographe by the Lumiere Brothers in 1895. Since then, the film industry has diversified, extending far beyond its humble beginnings and gradually overshadowing its birth nation’s contributions to the art form. Production firm Joinery, on behalf of the Alliance Française, ‘pitched’ famous French films to established Hollywood producers, reveling in the absurdity of the modern film landscape.
Director: Francois Rousselet
Client: Diesel
Agency: Publicis
One of the larger production firms on our rankings list, Division proudly calls Paris its home, blending its film and music video stylings to all of its numerous advert campaigns. We wanted to highlight its 2017 advert for clothing giant Diesel, celebrating the wonderful flaws that all people have. Purposely forgoing traditional models to show off Diesel’s merchandise, “Flaw” confronts the conformity usually shown off in most fashion-focused adverts, reveling in the perfection of imperfection.
Director: N/A
Client: Ubisoft
Agency: DDB Paris
Most video game adverts would focus on the power-fantasy of the game a player wishes to inhabit, whether it’s a futuristic gangster or an ancient Greek mercenary. Yet makemepulse, a firm founded in
2008 with a focus on digital content, wanted to highlight both the most populous and most overlooked aspect of any given game: the NPC. Created in the run-up to Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, “NPC” is a unique, funny look at the crowds that populate our games, smashing the world of ancient Greece with our present-day obsession with social media influencers.
Director: Nicolas Galoux
Client: Burns & Smiles
Agency: TBWA Paris
TBWA is one of the most highly respected of the international production companies for advertisement, taking on drastically different clients but tuning their creative visions to meet their needs. From its Parisian office, we have a PSA campaign with the Burns & Smiles, a French burn victim non-profit. Following a facial burn victim over the course of Halloween, the advert captures the joy of life while also the heartbreak of relative normality on the one night of the year the person is able to be a normal man again. It’s a stirring call to action that isn’t easily forgotten.
Director: N/A
Client: Carrefour
Agency: Marcel
Iconoclast has always prided itself on rich visuals and captivating storytelling, no matter which client calls upon their service. Its Parisian office has the distinct honour of not only creating a captivating advert for retail giant Carrefour, but also having an impact on Europe at large. With a widespread campaign focused on the absurdity of laws dictated by agrochemical interests, Carrefour dedicated itself to selling ‘illegal’ fruit and vegetables to promote biodiversity and sustainability. To truly judge the impact of this advert is to see the EU’s response: a change in the lawbooks favorably towards farmers and a positive change in Carrefour’s image.
——
We hope that you enjoyed our journey through Paris’ best ad production companies. If it’s not fundamentally changing European laws, it’s living out our film fantasies in the best ways possible. There is no shortage of high-quality production houses in the Paris metropolitan area and that what you see here are among the best of the best in this regard. Yet, these are just our personal favorites; there are even more production companies in the city and all throughout France that you can find on the right.video search engine!
Written by
