How Rosa Paris navigated a copycat campaign with humor
In this week’s episode of The Drum's Anatomy of an Ad podcast, Rosa Paris co-founder Gilles Fichteberg details the moment he found out an ad his agency made for a supermarket had been copied by another brand. What happened next will surprise you.
Amy Houston chats with Gilles Fichteberg
Last May, popular French supermarket Grand Frais and its ad agency Rosa Paris released a fun ad campaign. The spot featured three young men who were met with an empty fridge and detail their excitement about going to the store to get more groceries. Pretty normal so far, right? Well, the tv ad was a hit with audiences in France… and beyond.
Turns out, a supermarket in Qatar called Monoprix loved the commercial so much that they not only drew inspiration from it, they copied it scene for scene – even down to the music choice.
“This is where the crazy story starts,” laughs Fichteberg. “The Grand Frais tv ad had been on for two months already. We were at Cannes Lions, so all the agencies were there, then we got a WhatsApp message from the client.”
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The agency boss then details how Grand Frais had seen an imposter ad and were naturally, quite shocked. Fichteberg’s phone started going wild with various texts from people letting him know what they had seen.
“It was the craziest copycat. It was the same TVC, remade frame by frame. It wasn’t just inspiration. We were super shocked, amazed and surprised,” he recalls “First we had a coffee and then we wondered what we could do because it is the first time that we had a copycat and the client was upset.”
Rosa Parks contemplated asking Monoprix to delay the ad, and they wondered if they should call a lawyer but what they ended up doing surprised everyone.
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To hear the full story. Listen to this week’s episode of Anatomy of an Ad.