French agency: Hello Sunshine

...Let the sun shine

After an abundance of doom and gloom over the past few years, new Parisian boutique Hello Sunshine is planning on bringing a much-needed breath of fresh air to the advertising world. Only launched last December, the outfit is a new initiative from fellow successful French start-up Fred & Farid and is banishing the blues by focusing on optimism.

“The idea behind the agency comes from a simple observation: the darker the world is becoming, the more people are drawn to brands, individuals or entities that embody a sense of hope and optimism,” explains co-founder Gwen Raillard, ex-group executive planning director of Ogilvy Singapore. “This can be observed in popular culture, but the main point is that this is also true for brands. Brand popularity is more and more directly derived from their capacity to embrace and embody optimism.” Raillard cites examples such as Google, Innocent, Pixar and Coca-Cola.

At the time of going to press, Hello Sunshine had yet to unveil its first account wins. But the creation of the agency itself has been a brand experiment for its founders, who have worked on creating a vision for Hello Sunshine that will put a smile on clients’ faces and bring optimism to their output.

“Obviously, optimism is pretty broad,” says co-founder Dawn Ng, a Singaporean artist and ex-BBH and Ogilvy creative. “There is the naïve aspect of it and there is the corporate responsibility aspect, and then there are also aspects that are just more humorous and light-hearted and more honest and truthful. It’s not really a skew on saying we’ll only have fun and happy brands; it’s more the way we try to unlock a problem and look at it creatively.”

hello-sunshine.fr