HELSINQI CREATIVE

Message misses by a continent

Sunday, 14 February 2010

In this clip from the French show Le petit journal on Canal+, host Yann Barthès lampoons a recent publicity video by President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party, the UMP. Called « La France change » (“France is Changing”), the video shows an idyllic, happy France renewed by Sarko and his party, replete with happy ball-tossing families, solar houses, and cheerfully diverse schoolkids.

There’s just one little problem with all that great Gallic goodness. As Barthès’ team discovered, the UMP’s happy France was shot on location — in the good old US of A. The ball that family is tossing is an American football, and the car driving behind them is sporting California plates. That solar house is in Escondido, the schoolkids are from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and the mom and daughter are hugging in Cambria, California.

Hey, why waste money hiring your own constituents to film the country that elected you, when you can make it all happen with stock footage courtesy of Getty Images? Now that’s what I call centime wise and euro foolish.

Incidentally, I wonder how this proposed tax would have affected the UMP’s stock footage budget…

Merci à Clélia Valat, pour m’envoyer ce clip!