Vehicle maintenance brand Feu Vert has turned its faithful brand mascot Ramses into an action hero—or at least that’s the potential pitch for its latest ad campaign.
The company, which claims to service the cars and bikes of 10 million customers across its 450 car centers in Europe each year, has a white cat as its mascot who is positioned as one of the main decisionmakers in this spot.
The car maintenance brand aims to accelerate its digital development and b-to-b business as it expands through franchising, predominantly in France, Portugal and Spain.
Created by Buzzman, the meta 40-second hero cinema and TV campaign sees a superpowered cat battle a large robotic monster as it rampages through a city, but there’s a twist along the way that involves a misunderstanding on the part of the creative team. The visual effects sequence within the campaign was created by The Mill.
“Today more than ever, people are concerned about purchasing power. In France, we call it pouvoir d’achat. This word sounds really close to ‘chat,’ which means cat in French. So, as a popular brand led by a cat mascot, we saw an opportunity for Feu Vert to take over the trend. We decided to fight for le pouvoir d’achat with our cat and its pouvoir du chat,” Tristan Daltroff, a creative director for Buzzman, explained to Adweek.
The aim of the campaign is to promote the message that Feu Vert has “the power” to save customers money on vehicle services.
“It’s a play on words, but we took it seriously and brought it to an outstanding level of craft and excellence. The result is a Marvel feature epic scene ending with an awkward agency-client moment of misunderstanding,” added Louis Audard, another creative director who led the campaign’s idea development.
Released on May 25, the campaign is running across TV, digital and radio, while movie posters will appear in Feu Vert stores and across social media.
