{"id":312743,"date":"2025-12-12T21:17:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T21:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/312743\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T21:17:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T21:17:12","slug":"forget-john-lewis-the-french-show-us-how-to-do-a-christmas-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/312743\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget John Lewis, the French show us how to do a Christmas ad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2019Tis the season of artificial intelligence-generated Christmas advertisements. Five specialists were said to be behind the offering from Coca-Cola \u2014 complete with computer-confected storks, sloths and polar bears infected with Christmas cheer \u2014 which was criticised as cheap-looking. <\/p>\n

A clip by McDonald\u2019s in the Netherlands and its slogan \u201cthe most terrible time of year\u201d unnerved viewers with a cast including anthropomorphic biscuits burning on a tray and a belligerent Father Christmas stuck in traffic. It was removed after a backlash. <\/p>\n

In France, however, a wolf who decides to become vegetarian has become the unlikely saviour of human-made cheer. A Christmas advert for a French supermarket chain has won tens of millions of views online and praise for artistry untainted by robots.<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

Intermarch\u00e9 has denied that the advert is trying to deter the French from eating meat<\/p>\n

The two-minute cartoon, in which the lonely carnivore wins the friendship of forest animals by not eating them and learning to cook legumes instead, was commissioned by Intermarch\u00e9 to warm viewers\u2019 hearts in an all-out American manner, but with French style. <\/p>\n

Set to a nostalgic Seventies hit, Le Mal Aim\u00e9 (\u201cUnloved\u201d) by Claude Fran\u00e7ois, the advert took a year to make by a team of 80 people, led by the Montpellier-based animation company Illogic Studios and produced by the Wizz studio in Paris. <\/p>\n

Within hours of its first broadcast, during the Miss France final on December 6, the advert, showing the wolf chopping carrots and mushrooms to lyrics lamenting being misunderstood, took off on streaming platforms, helped by English subtitles. <\/p>\n

Admiring social media posts from around the world showed the animators had touched an international nerve. In France, a country fond of debate, the praise has been tempered with gripes from the right about \u201cvegan propaganda dressed up in an animal story\u201d, and charges of stigmatising meat. From the left, some are unhappy over the misappropriation of lupine identity and dietary dictation. <\/p>\n

As the clip garnered millions of international views, the industry hailed the flair of the old-style cartoon. \u201cWhile massive global brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald\u2019s resort to AI for their Christmas ads, a French supermarket chain has just demonstrated the power and value of human-made animation,\u201d Creative Bloq, an international art and design website, said. \u201cSome people think even Disney and Pixar could learn a thing or two.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Paul McCartney: Don\u2019t let EU ban Linda\u2019s vegetarian \u2018sausage\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Thierry Cotillard, the chairman of Les Mousquetaires, Intermarch\u00e9\u2019s parent company, said the chain was delighted to have \u201cgone against the trend of AI<\/a>\u201d and had shown that human intelligence can create \u201ca different emotion than a robot\u201d. He added: \u201cWe are very proud to be giving the Americans a lesson.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cotillard denied that Intermarch\u00e9, whose fresh meat sections are doing a roaring seasonal trade, was promoting changes to viewers\u2019 diets, although after the wolf sits down to Christmas lunch with the animals, the ad ends with the message: \u201cWe all have a reason to start eating better.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it was about loneliness, self-improvement and acceptance. \u201cIt\u2019s not about encouraging people to stop eating meat,\u201d he said. \u201cThe idea is that no one should be excluded, not the wolf, who is not going to eat his new friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Claude<\/p>\n

The ad has revived interest in the music of Claude Fran\u00e7ois, who died in 1978<\/p>\n

ERLING MANDELMANN\/GAMMA-RAPHO\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

Anne Guivarc\u2019h, Intermarch\u00e9\u2019s brand director, said the company had never considered using AI when it decided to replace its previous Christmas ad, which had been running for eight years. \u201cThis year it was the right moment to go 100 per cent for emotion, given these difficult times. To offer a film like a cocoon, today more than ever,\u201d she told Influencia, a trade website. <\/p>\n

The video has brought Christmas cheer to the heirs of Fran\u00e7ois, with his song soaring on streaming platforms. It has also spurred foreign interest in his cheesier end of the Seventies Chanson fran\u00e7aise genre.<\/p>\n

The words of Fran\u00e7ois, who died aged 39 in 1978 when he accidentally electrocuted himself in his bathroom, set the mood for the wolf\u2019s loneliness. \u201cI\u2019m really afraid, all my life, of being misunderstood.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2019Tis the season of artificial intelligence-generated Christmas advertisements. Five specialists were said to be behind the offering from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-312743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}