La Chose

Since its launch in 2006, La Chose has been hatching a digital revolution in the Parisian advertising world. Isobel Roberts discovers how media has become the message

Back in 2006, La Chose swept its way on to the Parisian advertising scene amidst a wave of viral marketing. In a city of strong international networks, the founders of this independent agency were determined to revolutionise what they saw as the French industry’s conservative approach. “We had seen the new way of advertising,” says creative director and co-founder Pascal Grégoire (right). “We decided it was not possible to have walls between advertising, digital, marketing services, events and PR.”

Armed with some of the best experience around – Grégoire was previously president at CLM BBDO, fellow partner Eric Tong Cuong was a co-founder of BETC Euro RSCG and director general at BBDP, while third founder Alain Roussel belonged to RSCG before becoming director general of BETC Euro RSCG – the trio were tired of network politics and eager for a fresh approach.

“The idea was, under one roof, to have talent from advertising, digital and marketing all working together with one invoice for the client,” explains Grégoire. “No creative person working on just this or that, everybody works on everything. I call them magicians – they do emailing, newsletters, events, TV commercials. And then on the other side we have architects, not account people, because they have to organise everything – from banners to events to traditional advertising. They have to learn, because no one can do everything at first, so we take young people and really train them to be responsible for all the architecture.”

Having grown to 50 people, La Chose’s recipe includes pretty much every mode of communication out there.

And while their brief for furniture giant IKEA covers all communication, for Dutch fashion house Viktor & Rolf the agency built a striking website, while for the launch of the new Cisco Flip phone, the team organised a launch party and shot all the viral material themselves. “The media and orchestration of a campaign is part of creativity,” continues Grégoire. “It’s not only creative ideas, in this system you have to think about the tempo of what you organise, to make what I call a public direction campaign – how people understand something is happening, not through an advertising channel but in a newspaper, from a friend, on the web.”

On the topic of the French industry’s creative levels, Grégoire remains positive on the nation’s output in the conventional media, but reckons the country’s approach to new technologies is missing a certain spark. “Digital creativity in France is weak at the moment. On new media we are too conservative. The revolution is simple – it’s not your idea in the media, instead your idea becomes the media so it is totally revolutionising things.”

And so as that well-known saying goes – vive la Digital Revolution, vive la French Advertising.