Bears are usually just comic props in commercials. Not so in this wonderful, hilarious spot for the French movie channel Canal+ by Paris ad agency BETC Euro RSCG.

Here, the bear runs the show—as the director of a medieval action film. The spot opens with a hectic, violent scene from the film itself. But soon, the bear—his name is Paul Bearman—stops the action and strolls out on to the set to dispense advice on everything from the special effects to the acting. The spot then progresses as a mockumentary, with the bear explaining how he developed his passion for cinema. It turns out he's the prototypical Hollywood director—a bit of douchebag, a bit of a diva, but really a true Renaissance bear when it comes to filmmaking. (He even conducts the orchestra when they record the score.) The only thing that's a little weird is that he appears extraordinarily thin, and his whole underside has a taxidermied, rug-like appearance. This is all explained in the great visual punch line at the end of the spot.

"The more you love Canal+, the more you love cinema," says the onscreen line at the end. Likewise, the more you watch the spot, the more you love Canal+. (Note: The agency has also done some nice press materials, including a very funny interview with Mr. Bearman. Check out that Q&A below the spot itself. Creative credits are below that.)



Interview with the bear:

Hello, Paul Bearman, you play the lead role in the latest ad for Canal+ whereas you are in fact a film director. It is unusual to call upon a director to play the part of an actor in an ad. Can you tell us how this all came about?
When BETC contacted me to do this ad for Canal+, I said yes straight away. I should probably mention that I was completely broke and I needed money to finish the post-production of my latest film. They then asked me if their people could be there for the filming and follow all the stages of the production of the project. At first I refused (I have my own way of working you know, and the thought of having a bunch of advertising types on my back during the filming didn't really appeal to me), then we talked about it with my producer. You can't imagine how persuasive a producer can be when they're in need of money. I accepted.

How did the filming go with the agency?
At the beginning, it was quite tense. They brought in a Dutch director (Matthijs Van Heijningen) with all his team. It was no longer clear who was filming what. To his credit, I would say that he is a rather good director (Pepsi, Canal+ "The Closet", etc., and a feature film, "The Thing", which is due to be released in October – Ed), but he had the cheek to try to give me advice about directing! As for the agency… Apart from eating chocolate bars at the control booth and behaving like idiots during filming, you have to wonder what's the point of these people!

But you ended up accepting, in the end?
That's true. But I accepted because it was an ad for Canal+. It's an excellent channel, which does a lot for filmmaking (Canal+ is also co-producer of the next Paul Bearman film – Ed). And then, little by little, we got used working together and everything went smoothly. As long as the agency guy kept well away from my leading actress (laughs).

Paul, tell us a bit about yourself. How did you become a film director?
Well, actually, what you saw in this ad is true, apart from a few details. They did blank out a major part of my life, which I guess was not glamorous enough for the ad (laughs). Of course, Canal+ set things off, but don't forget that becoming a director takes a lot of work. During these lean years, I had to work in a circus for nearly a year in order to be able to pay for my director classes. Then came my studies, it wasn't easy to keep up, considering that I spent six months of the year hibernating! Then I made my first short film, a few ads—everyone has to eat! But, you know, it's the same thing for my fellow film directors. We all went through it.

And after this film, do you have any plans?
Well, there is the promo to do for the ad. I don't like that kind of thing really, but you have to do it. Then, in early November, I'm off to hibernate with my family in the Caribbean. In spring, I start shooting a new film. I can't really say too much about it for the time being, but it will be different from what I have done up until now, more like David Lynch-style.

CREDITS:
Client: Canal+
Spot: "The Bear"
Client Management: Maxime Saada, Samantha Etienne, Béatrice Roux, Mathieu Mazuel, Périne Long
Agency: BETC Euro RSCG, Paris
Agency Management: Raphaël De Andréis, Alexandre George, Guillaume Espinet, Sébastien Jauffret
Global Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Art Director: Eric Astorgue
Assistant Art Director: Julien Schmitt
Copywriter: Jean-Christophe Royer
Strategic Planning: Clarisse Lacarau
Traffic: Loren Hecker
TV Producer: Isabelle Ménard, David Green
Sound Production: Gum
Production Company: Soixante Quinze
Director: Matthijs Van Heijningen
Special Effects: Mikros Image
Music: Éric Cervera (Near Deaf Experience)

BETC Euro RSCG led the pack at the 91st annual Art Directors Club awards Tuesday night, winning the organization's Agency of the Year honor after collecting the most cumulative trophies across the competition's categories. The agency took home multiple gold Cubes for "The Bear," a TV spot about an animal-skin rug with a passion for filmmaking, created to promote French movie channel Canal+. 

BBDO, meanwhile took the ADC's Network of the Year title. Among its wins: A gold in the "Interactive: Physical" category for a gaming stunt from BBDO Germany GmbH's that turned Daimler AG's Smart Cars into giant Pong controllers. The New York Times Magazine won Design Team of the Year, including a Gold in editorial for the 2011 story "What Happened to Air France Flight 447?" And the School of Visual Arts took ADC's School of the Year award, including a Gold Cube in the "Student: Motion" category for its 2011 Portfolio Screening video.

CAA Marketing also took top honors for its Chipotle "Back to the Start" spot. The long-form, sustainable farming ad, which features a Willie Nelson cover of Coldplay's "The Scientist," won one of two "Designism" awards for "work that drives social or political change," as well as four gold cubes (the most for a single piece of work). Earlier this year, the video also won a GRANDY, the top honor at the Ad Club's ANDY Awards.

The second ADC "Desiginism" award went to Lowe/SSP3 in Bogota, Colombia for "Operation Christmas," which encouraged guerillas to demobilize by placing Christmas lights in trees in the jungle. 

Click to view the full list of awards—other Gold winners included Y&R New York for Land Rover's "Pathological Liar" spot and BBH New York/Google Creative Lab for Google's "The Web is What You Make Of It." 

The club did not award any black cubes—it's best-in-show honor—this year, for the second time in the award's four-year existence. Last year, Wieden+Kennedy won two, one each for it's Old Spice and Nike work. 

Mother New York took the top honors at 2012's One Show last night, winning "Best of Show" for  "Little Marina," the 25-foot-tall, Missoni-wearing, smartphone-waving doll that the agency created for New York Fashion Week to promote Target's Missoni line. 

The agency also tweeted and blogged in the voice of the persona they had fabricated for the doll—"a young, style-obsessed girl [who] gets the gig of lifetime" blogging for Target and Missoni, who "then decide to send her to New York City to report on" Fashion Week—a backstory that echoes real-life stories of teens finding their way to fame through their fashion blogs. "Not only did fashionista and blogger ‘Little Marina’ play a key role in the conversation during New York Fashion Week, she became the talk of the town,”” One Club president Kevin Swanepoel said in a statement.

The One Show also honored K-Swiss with its Client of the Yea" award for its provocative campaign casting profane, fictional athlete Kenny Powers of HBO's Eastbound and Down as the new "Motherf***ing CEO" of the company. The campaign was created by 72andSunny.

This year's Gold Pencil winners also included BETC Euro RSCG's "The Bear" spot for French movie channel Canal+, starring an animal-skin rug with a passion for filmmaking, which also won the Agency of the Year title at the annual Art Directors Club awards on Tuesday. Other Gold Pencils winners included David and Goliath, for its Kia "Drive the Dream"Super Bowl spot, starring Motley Crue and Adrian Lima; Wieden + Kennedy for its Old Spice "Smell is Power" work; and AMV BBDO in London for Dorito's "Dip Desperado."

The One Show awarded a total of 115 Pencil awards. The agency to win the most was Wieden+Kennedy Portland, with six total—three gold, two silver and one bronze. 72andSunny won four gold and one bronze. By country, the United States led with 43 prizes: 14 gold, 11 silver and 18 bronze. Germany followed with 10 awards, and the U.K. took home nine.

Find the complete list of winners at the One Club website.

CANNES, France—One of the funniest spots of the past year was also judged to be the best crafted at the Cannes Lions festival here tonight, as Paris agency BETC won the Grand Prix in Film Craft for its Canal+ ad "The Bear."

The commercial, which broke last October, features a bear who is a hotshot Hollywood director—a bit of a diva, a complete control freak but an enormous talent nonetheless. In the end, it turns out the whole spot was the daydream of a taxidermied bear rug who'd spent many hours lying on the living-room floor watching movies on the French TV network Canal+.

"Pourquoi pas moi?" he says at the end. He may not have made it in Hollywood, but he conquered the Cannes Lions.

"The Bear" also won three gold Lions and a silver in other subcategories in the contest.

The top U.S. winners were Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore., which won a gold and three silvers for Procter & Gamble's "Best Job," and Creative Artists Agency, which won a gold and a silver for Chipotle's "Back to the Start."

U.S. shop won two other silvers, along with nine bronzes. Here is the full list of U.S. wins in the Film Craft category:

Film Craft Lions - Gold Lions (U.S. agencies)
• Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. - Procter & Gamble - "Best Job" - Anonymous Content, Culver City, Calif.
• Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles - Chipotle - "Back to the Start" - Nexus Productions, London

Film Craft Lions - Silver Lions (U.S. agencies)
• Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. - Procter & Gamble - "Best Job" - Anonymous Content, Culver City, Calif. (3 silvers)
• Anomaly, New York - Converse - "History Made and in the Making" - Smuggler, Hollywood
• Droga5, New York - LVMH - "Manny" - Hungry Man, New York
• Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles - Chipotle - "Back to the Start" - Nexus Productions, London

Film Craft Lions - Bronze Lions (U.S. agencies)
• Grey, New York - Directv - "Platoon" - MJZ, Los Angeles (2 bronzes)
• TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles - Nissan - "Gas Powered Everything" - MJZ, Los Angeles
• Saatchi & Saatchi, Los Angeles - Toyota - "Kentucky" - Smuggler, Hollywood
• Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. - Levi's - "Legacy" - @Radical.Media, New York
• Wieden + Kennedy, New York - ESPN - "The Name" - Biscuit Filmworks, Los Angeles
• Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco - Chevrolet - "Ok Go" - Caviar, Los Angeles
• Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. - Nike - "I Would Run to You" - Rattling Stick, Los Angeles
• Harvest, Santa Monica - Nike - "Jumprope" - Harvest, Santa Monica
• Deutsch, Los Angeles - Volkswagen - "The Bark Side" - Caviar, Los Angeles
• Google Studio G, Mountain View, Calif. - Google - "Introducing Google Play" - Google Studio G, Mountain View, Calif./Camp Creative, Berkeley, Calif.
 

All the Film Craft Lions winners will be posted here after 11 p.m. Cannes time (5 p.m. ET) on Saturday night.

 For complete coverage of Cannes Lions 2012,
visit adweek.com/cannes.

Oh, I get it—soccer players.

Canal+ (that's pronounced cannle-plue, francophiles!) is the European HBO, and obviously people are excited about it—and about the big soccer matches it broadcasts—if this BETC spot is anything to go by. Even if you don't get the non-American-football joke straight away, the visuals here are excellent. And really, the potbellied man with the front of his T-shirt pulled up over his face is the international sign for sports fan.

Here, three pals do the "Gooooooal!" knee-slide through a French town, and river, and dock, and wheat field, presumably because their favorite Ligue 1 team has just scored. Where there seems to be CG in this spot (if you can figure out how they got the fans through the hedge using casters or drag mats, feel free to explain it to me in the comments), it is used well—these gentlemen appear to be going faster via knee than most of us can go on the subway here in New York City. (This agency-client team knows a thing or two about effects, too, having won the Grand Prix in Film Craft at Cannes this year for their triumphant spot "The Bear.")

Other nice touches here: the costume on the biker on the little farm-country road; the trip down the stairs (again, if that was a practical effect, I'd love to know how it was done); the "Ode to Joy" going underwater and becoming briefly muffled; and, of course, the postman, who has that reaction everyone has when they recognize that people who like their team are cheering.

All of this raises some serious and important questions about knee-based inter-département travel. Do you have to have a knee license to cross regional boundaries? Can you go at any time, or must you have recently seen a rerun of Zinedine Zidane headbutting Marco Materazzi? Are all knees all-terrain, or just those of soccer fans?

And will someone be waiting for you at the end of your journey with a spray can of Bactine and a Band-Aid? Because, as everyone who has been 6 remembers, doing that to your knees hurts like hell.



CREDITS
Client: Canal+
Client Management: Samantha Etienne, Béatrice Roux, Mathieu Mazuel, Guillaume Sionis
Agency: BETC, Paris
Agency Management: Alexandre George, Guillaume Espinet, Barbara Hartmann
Chief Creative Officer: Stephane Xiberras
Creative Director: Olivier Apers
Art Director: Ludovic Labayrade
Copywriter: Antoine Lenoble
TV Producer: Isabelle Ménard
Production Company: Henry de Czar
Film Director: Bart Timmer
Director of Photography: Alex Lamarque
Media Strategy Planner: Vianney Vaute

This week, Bing bashed Google for "Scroogling" your holiday shopping searches, StubHub's ticket tree mourned its piney and formerly ornamented cousin, and Expedia unleashed a rare commercial that will have you crying and smiling at the same time.

Many of the hundreds of TV commercials that air each day are just blips on the radar, having little impact on the psyche of the American consumer, who is constantly bombarded by advertising messages.

These aren't those commercials.

Adweek and AdFreak have brought together the most innovative and well-executed spots of the week—commercials that will make you laugh, smile, cry, think and maybe buy.

Video Gallery: Top 10 Commercials of the Week

The latest show from the creator of Homicide: Life on the Street and Oz is not on pay cable. Or cable at all, actually. Or broadcast. It’s called Borgia (not to be confused with Showtime’s The Borgias), and it’s a twistier, more political take on the Renaissance-era family that produced two popes. In an unprecedented move, production company Atlantique hired Fontana to create the historical drama without a network—it’s already aired on French premium channel Canal+—and now that it’s in Season 2, the Borgia team is trying to get some stateside attention. Believers already include Netflix Streaming and Amazon Instant Video.

Adweek: How is this different from producing directly for a network?
What’s remarkable to me about it is that there was a time when you couldn’t go to Europe and make a TV series unless it had a network or a studio attached to it. Atlantique said, “We just want to do this; all we want is an American showrunner. We don’t need the money; we just need the expertise.” And when they contacted me, I said, “Are you really serious about doing it the way they do in America?” Because my understanding is that in Europe, the writer is the least important person in the equation, and I said, “I really want to be in charge of everything. If you can live with that, I’m happy to spend time in the Czech Republic and go to casting sessions in Paris and London.”

Where have you guys been picked up so far?
It’s streamed on Netflix, but we want to try to get it out there on a more traditional level, just because obviously it’s also more money. But the amount of money they’re looking for—and I don’t know the exact numbers—is relatively low. The one thing that traditional television still has that none of [the streaming services] have is in-your-face, pop-culture-y recognition. It’s ironic because the show is a hit in 55 countries, just not America.

So this isn’t a crime show.
Well, you can just make them a bunch of popes who poisoned people and skulked around corners cackling about having killed Cardinal Orsini, but it’s boring to write. And, I would imagine, boring to perform.

Why did you cast John Doman (from HBO’s The Wire) as Rodrigo Borgia?
When we were casting for our Rodrigo, we saw a lot of wonderful British actors, but they all seemed very British to us. And being Sicilian myself, there’s a kind of Mediterranean thing you look for. John’s not Italian, but he has that thing.

How did you get involved?
First they approached Chris Albrecht [formerly of HBO, now head of Starz] about doing a show about the Borgias, and he knew that I have a fascination with the popes, being a half-assed Catholic. And he said, “Well, if you want an American showrunner and you want somebody who already knows everything about the Borgias, you should just get Tom Fontana.” I love research, so I was just a pig in shit. It was sort of the same thing that happened with Oz, when Chris and Anne [Thomopoulos, another HBO vet] said to me, “We should just have fun with it.” This is the first time I ever thought I would be excommunicated for writing a television series. I thought I was going to be shot before, but now I’m worried about the afterlife.

But you’re not as hard on the Borgias as others have been.
The Borgia family has had such a bad reputation over all these hundreds of years. Some of it is merited, and for some of it, they were swiftboated. The cardinals hired writers to write bad things about them. Go back to original source material and look at Latin that hasn’t been translated into any other language. To me, they were less the Corleone family than the Murdochs. They had this global brand—salvation!—that they could sell!

“The Bear,” a commercial for French premium pay channel Canal+, was the world’s most-awarded TV spot in 2012, according to The Gunn Report, a global ranking of winners compiled from the major annual industry awards shows.

The film, produced by BETC, Paris, also takes the prize as the most-awarded commercial in The Gunn Report’s 14-year history.

Last year the agency bringing home the most acclaim was Wieden+Kennedy, Portland and New York, while the network winning the most awards was BBDO, which has earned that distinction for each of the past seven years. The Omnicom company was also named the most-awarded agency network in digital and film.

Samsonite Suitcases’ “Heaven and Hell” from JWT, Shanghai, topped the list of most-awarded print ads and campaigns, the first ad to do so for two consecutive years. It is also now the most-awarded print ad in the The Gunn Report’s history. Intel’s “The Museum of Me” from Projector, Tokyo, was the digital campaign garnering the most global recognition.

Other top winning commercials were “Dads in Briefs” for BGH Silent Air from Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Buenos Aires; “Dip Desperado” for Doritos Dips from AMV BBDO, London; Chipotle’s “Back to the Start,” from CAA Marketing, Los Angeles; and John Lewis’ “The Long Wait” from adam&eveDDB, London.

Rounding out the rankings of the most-awarded agencies were Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Buenos Aries; BBH, London; AlmapBBDO, Sao Paulo, and tying for fifth place, adam&eveDDB, London, and Dentsu, Tokyo and Fukuoka.

After BBDO, the agency networks receiving the most recognition were DDB, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett and Y&R.

BETC and Canal+ together produced one of the most beloved ads of recent years in "The Bear," a hilarious and impeccably produced spot that won the Film Craft Grand Prix at Cannes in 2012. The French agency and client are now back with their latest commercial—an intriguingly odd production starring a bunch of dwarf clowns.

Why dwarf clowns? The spot promotes a new Canal+ channel, launching this month, that's fully dedicated to TV series. The great thing about TV series is you're always dying to see what happens next. Likewise, in watching this ad, the viewer has no idea who these dwarf clowns are, or what they're going to do next. And then, at the end, it turns out, rather absurdly, that they've been subjected to a cliffhanger themselves, which explains their peripatetic behavior.

"The idea was to make an intriguing film that creates suspense—you can't wait to find out how it ends. Just like when you watch a good series," says Stéphane Xiberras, president and chief creative officer of BETC Paris. "This was one of the reasons we chose dwarf clowns; in great series there's often something a bit odd about the unusual characters that makes you become attached to them—a cop serial killer, a depressed mafioso, a family of undertakers."

The spot was shot in Vancouver this summer. It was directed by Steve Rogers and will be followed by an outdoor campaign all over France. Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Canal+
Client Management: Alice Holzman, Elodie Bassinet, Anne-Gaëlle Petri, Coline André
Agency: BETC Paris
Agency Management: Bertille Toledano, Guillaume Espinet, Alix de Luze, Pauline Filippi, Marius Chiumino
Executive Creative Director: Stephane Xiberras
Copywriter: Jean-Christophe Royer
Art Director: Eric Astorgue
Assistant Art Director: Damien Binello
Strategic Planning: Clarisse Lacarrau, Vianney Vaute
Traffic: Coralie Chasset
TV Producer: Isabelle Menard
Production Company: Wanda
Producer: Jérôme Denis
Sound Production: Kouz
Director: Steve Rogers

Sundance's new Euro drama, The Returned, starts its disturbing run on the AMC Networks cabler Thursday at 9 p.m. And to celebrate its creepy premise—the undead try to return to their lives and find ... well, a lot of problems—the network has come up with an inventive, interactive promo (see below) that directs the viewer to choose "Life" or "Death."

The main difference seems to be that the "Death" choice is more depressing, but if you watch the show, it'll make more sense—some people, when faced with the resurrection of their loved ones, just can't deal with it. It's a similar premise (though much better executed) to the ambitious BBC/Starz miniseries Torchwood: Miracle Day, which didn't really pay off.

Engagement is top-of-mind for pretty much everybody in the digital space these days, and marketers are coming up with novel ways to boost it; we've all seen the U..K's Skip Button ad, and approaches like these may help to drag in the curious.

On the surface, The Returned would seem to demand an inventive marketing campaign since it's fighting an uphill battle against subtitle-averse TV viewers. But the show is already landing raves, so we'll see whether critical acclaim and cool marketing can beat assumed passivity on Friday—Sundance has had a good run lately with Rectify and Top of the Lake.

Sheb Wooley comes screaming out of the mists of pop culture into the commercial mainstream in FCB's new campaign for pay-TV channel Canal+ in Spain.

Wooley is the voice actor who performed the "Wilhelm scream," a ubiquitous sound effect that debuted in the 1951 adventure Distant Drum and has since been dubbed into more than 200 movies, including Toy Story and the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones series. It takes its name from Private Wilhelm, a character in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River. (Modern auteurs like George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg apparently use the scream in their productions whenever possible.)

The ad below, by FCB Spain and FCB Los Angeles, stars Wooley's widow, Linda Dotson Wooley, as "The Woman Who Can't Watch Movies"—because she's afraid she'll hear her husband's famous scream. The mockumentary points to a website that encourage folks to "donate" their screams and overdub Wooley so Linda can enjoy Hollywood films again. The site lets you record screams for up to three movie clips and share the results with friends. They'll really appreciate that.

Even though it's all a goof, I kept thinking that Linda could just watch something outside Wooley's filmography—like the Scream movies or Home Alone, in which, it seems, Macaulay Culkin handled the screamy honors himself.

CREDITS
Client: Canal+
Agency: FCB Spain; FCB Los Angeles
Campaign: "Leave Wilhelm Alone"
Client Contacts: Iñaki Martikorena, Bernardo Melero, Purification González
Executive Creative Directors: Pedro Soler, Eric Springer
Creative Team: Beatriz Pedrosa, Peio Azkoaga, Joao Freitas
Producers: Brendan Kiernan, Steve Devore, Thomas Anderson, Kate Borkowski, Kepa Vizcay
Production Company: Helo
Director: Alex Grossman
Lighting: Seamus Tierney
Sound: Sam Tornero Pulido
Web Developers: Carlos Lainez, Miguel Iglesias
App Developers: Joan Arbó, Jorge Cubillo
Social Media Strategy: Mauro Rodriguez, Jose Olivares
Poster: Beatriz Pedrosa, Marian de la Fuente
Planner: Manuel López

This Canal+ campaign, which uses the French TV channel's trademark "+" symbol as a visual cue in a series of reimagined movie posters, sure has lots of positives.

The work was created by BETC Paris to celebrate the 67th Cannes Film Festival (which runs May 14-25) and will appear as outdoor and print advertising during the event. Nine movies screening on Canal+ are featured, including Despicable Me 2, Fast & Furious 6, Star Trek Into Darkness and Man of Steel. The "+"s on these particular posters work extremely well, replacing, respectively, a Minion, tire tracks, stars in outer space and the stylized "S" on Superman's chest.

Canal+ has produced notably offbeat advertising in recent years, including ads with bears and dwarf clowns (via BETC) and a mockumentary about the guy behind Hollywood's most famous scream (via FCB).

The original poster artwork for many of the films in this latest campaign was intricate and memorable. (Trek's was quite dynamic, casting the outline-shape of the Star Fleet uniform badge as a dramatic "window" framing device.) Even so, the simplicity of Canal+'s sleek, stripped-down approach offers an uncluttered, clever homage that ultimately amounts to addition by subtraction.

CREDITS
Client: Canal+
Brand Management: Alice Holzman, Élodie Bassinet, Anne-Gaëlle Petri, Coline Andre
Agency: BETC, Paris
Agency Management: Bertille Toledano, Guillaume Espinet, Elsa Magadoux, Hugo Chavanel
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Creative Director: Olivier Apers
Art Director: Jordan Lemarchand
Copywriter: Julien Deschamps
Traffic: Coralie Chasset
Production: Sarah Belhadj

I'm roaring with approval for this interactive sequel, of sorts, to "The Bear," the 2012 Grand Prix-winning commercial from BETC Paris and French movie channel Canal+.

In the original, an ursine auteur sinks his claws into a big-budget medieval action film, fussing like a temperamental Hollywood diva over every aspect of production, from the script and direction to the special effects and score. Ultimately, the spot pulls the rug out from under viewers' expectations with an inspired visual punch line.

Now, with "Being the Bear," users can play director and take over a film set, choosing among several genre types to complete a dramatic scene (shown in the first commercial) in which a woman kneels over a wounded warrior who has been shot through the chest with an arrow. Naturally, some of the selections work better than others, but the writing and on-screen details are sharp throughout, and they reward multiple viewings. (The approach reminds me a bit of Tipp-Ex's pick-your-own-adventure videos—work from France that featured a goofy, scenery-chewing bear. It also recalls the "Film, TV and Theater Styles" game from Whose Line Is It Anyway?)

My favorites in the new Canal+ campaign include the "Porno" option, which lets the actors have a ball, and "Horror," a gloriously yucky exercise in spit-screen technique. The "Independent" selection yields the kind of self-obsessed, overly-probing dialogue only an audience of film majors (or Woody Allen) could love.

I wish they'd included a "Wildlife Documentary" option, because it might've given the bear—who stays behind the camera this time (we just glimpse his paw)—a role he could really sink his teeth into.

See the original spot below.

Via Adland.

Netflix broke through some heavy French telecom resistance today as it debuted its video-on-demand service in six more European countries. One of France's major telecom companies, Bouygues, announced that it would integrate Netflix in its TV set-top boxes starting in November, according to the Nasdaq news.

Bouyges' move is just the news Netflix wants to hear because its video-on-demand service counts on reliable broadband pipelines, and the set-top boxes are how French TV viewers access their programming. France's largest telecom company, Orange SA, has also signaled it would consider offering Netflix if the service is successful, according to the Nasdaq report.

This last-minute breakthrough comes amid reports last week that European countries didn't have the bandwidth to handle Netflix, an assertion flatly denied by a company spokesperson. Just to be safe, Netflix is increasing its server capacity in Paris.

The pieces appear to be coming together from a technical standpoint, but when it comes to content, there is ample French pushback.

French cable company Numericable started offering its subscribers access to a competing service today that it is calling SérieFlix. The offer includes access to 3,000 episodes of TV series, including Mad Men. The Wall Street Journal also reports that Numericable will start adding movies to its service in an attempt to blunt the Netflix rollout.

In the meantime, the country's premium cable-TV operator Canal+ is launching a new partnership with HBO and creating a Franco-American TV series. Canal+ owns the French rights to "House of Cards," which was ironically financed by Netflix, and counts half a million subscribers in France. Canal+ is also a major investor in producing French movies and is investigating pre-downloaded series and movies to counter Netflix's market share.

The French résistance to Netflix is based on widespread criticism of what commentators, politicians and film producers say is U.S. culture creeping into French society. The French are known for zealously guarding their language and culture, despite the introduction of such Americanisms as "le week-end" into the French vocabulary. To wit: a national requirement that 40 percent of content on TV, radio and the movies has to be French, which Netflix doesn't have to comply with because it is headquartered in Amsterdam.

Still, Netflix is reportedly planning to produce a TV drama called Marseille in late 2015 written by Dan Frank.

As the French tussle for control of cable content moves forward, five other European countries will be offering Netflix today. They include Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Germany is the biggest of the lot and already offers a considerable amount of free and pay-TV, and the country is considered to be a very lucrative growth market for Netflix.

Netflix has to work within a heavy European regulatory environment no matter where they operate in the EU. Starting next year, the company can only stream films less than three years old, and it will have to pay a 2 percent tax if its annual earnings exceed 10 million Euros in France.

We would still have unicorns around today were it not for an epic screw-up by Noah's son during the loading of the Ark all those years ago.

That's the premise of this amusingly overblown Canal+ ad from BETC Paris and director Matthijs Van Heijningen, who so memorably directed "The Bear" for the same agency and client in 2011.

It's hard to describe the ad without spoiling it, so just watch it first.



As you can see, the film celebrates—in a roundabout way—the broadcaster's screenwriters and its showcase of original programming. And yes, it certainly shows a different side of unicorns than we're used to seeing.

"We had some rather surreal discussions on what unicorns' balls actually look like," Stéphane Xiberras, agency president and chief creative officer, tells AdFreak. "We thought about doing something a bit … unexpected. There was talk of little furry balls with twinkling stars. But in the end we opted for a pair of 'classic' horse balls. I know, it's a bit bizarre."

And the balls were the easy part of this production. "Imagine a gigantic studio reproducing the inside of the Ark, filled with hundreds of animals," Xiberras says. "Now imagine the smell. Now imagine that the animals couldn't stand being under the same roof together."

Asked about the actor who plays Noah's son, Xiberras replied: "We fell for him straight away. We were looking for a guy capable of incarnating Noah's son as well as a modern-day ladies' man and screenwriter. He managed to show loads of emotions without any dialogue, except the phrase at the end. He goes from embarrassment to anxiety to victory and then shock in seconds. It's a great performance."

CREDITS
Client: Canal+
Brand Management: Alice Holzman, Aurélie Stock-Poeuf, Coline André
Agency: BETC
Agency Management: Bertille Toledano, Guillaume Espinet, Elsa Magadoux
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Creative Director: Olivier Apers
Art Director: Aurélie Scalabre
Copywriter: Patrice Dumas
Traffic: Coralie Chasset
Television Producer: Isabelle Ménard
Production House: Soixante Quinze
Sound Production: Kouz
Director: Matthijs Van Heijningen
Media Plan: Cinema, TV, Web
Available Formats: :40 :45 :50 :70

Paris agency BETC and client Canal+ have teamed up for a number of animal-themed commercials over the years, from their famous directing bear to their ballsy unicorns. But this latest creature could be their most impactful yet.

That's because he seems to crash into everything, when he's not tearing things to shreds, pulling his owner down the sidewalk, or scratching his anal glands in front of dinner guests. Yes, the wild boar (is that what it is?) in BETC's Christmas ad for the French pay-cable network is one crazy beast—and its owners' patience is wearing thin.

Check out the spot here:



The message is amusing enough, though pet-adoption agencies might feel aggrieved that the spot casts animal adoption in a poor light—unless they're actually happy that it fundamentally warns people not to blithely give pets as gifts.

With Canal+, these owners could have gotten their pig fix just by watching Babe.

CREDITS
Client: Canal+
Client Management: Julien Verley Guillaume Boutin Audrey Brugère Anne Laine Jordane De Villaret Elise Lacroix Coline André
Agency: BETC Paris
Agency Management: Bertille Toledano Guillaume Espinet Christophe Neyret Elsa Magadoux Mathieu Laugier Mathilde Lancon Jérémy Taffin
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Creative Director: Olivier Apers
Art Director: Marie-Eve Schoettl
Copywriter: David Soussan
Agency Producer: Isabelle Menard
Production Company: Control Films
Postproduction: Mikros
Sound Production: Schmooze
Director: Joachim Back

Soccer fun fact: A "clásico," which originally referred to a Real Madrid vs. Barcelona game, now means any game between fierce rivals within the same country—like Manchester United vs. Liverpool—making them highly anticipated national events. 

On Feb. 7, France's clásico will take place between Olympique de Marseille (OM) and Paris Saint-Germain. To build hype for the game, cable network Canal+, which has had exclusive rights to the broadcast for the last 20 years, released a new ad called "The Fan."

Created by BETC, the spot is so much more than your garden-variety soliloquy about the personal significance of the sport in the life of a die-hard OM follower.

This story has a twist. Watch the full, unspoilered version below. 



The poor guy works in stadium security.

That means he can never watch the matches happening right behind him, on the same field he's standing on ... that is, until the day his daughter—who, if her dad's anything like the sports fans in our family, probably gets short shrift attention-wise—uses Canal+ to help him witness a long-cherished moment for the first time. 

"Some games you just can't miss," the ad concludes, and the smile that lights our fan's face up is priceless. It's the smile of the dedicated, dogged and downtrodden devotee getting his payoff.

But it's also the redeeming smile of our jocular, middle-aged dads, who, after decades of career fidelity, have poured all of their human passion into something that everyone else in the family might consider pointless, or just not worthy of so much energy. (For my dad, it's boats. Boats in bottles. Boats at boat shows. And the lonely forgotten boat of Joe DiMaggio, still sitting in our home dock.)

Sports ads are probably best characterized for stoking the contagious emotions of fans and shining a spotlight on an underdog. In this sense, "The Fan" fits neatly in its genre. But it also refreshes with smart use of drama, comedic timing and tiny twists that refocus interest ... and are, incidentally, the key selling points of Canal+ in France, which easily invites comparison to HBO.

Solid work here; it's almost enough to make us want to watch dudes kick balls.

France is tired of America getting access to the coolest things first. So now it's drawing the line at Game of Thrones.

To promote French cable provider Canal+ airing the Game of Thrones Season 6 premiere at the exact same moment it debuts in America on HBO (that's 3 a.m. on April 25 for those en France), agency BETC created a clever outdoor campaign. 

Each illustrated ad shows something Americans got to enjoy long before the French could, from blue jeans to skateboards. In the second panel of each ad, we see one of the iconic logos from Game of Thrones' most notable houses and the good news that both nations will be revisited by these clashing clans simultaneously. 

Check out the ads and credits below:

CREDITS

Client: Canal+
Client Management: Audrey Brugère, Elise Lacroix and Eugènie Rodrigues

Agency: BETC
Agency Management: Guillaume Espinet, Elsa Magadoux and Mathilde Lançon
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Creative Direcotrs: Jean-Christophe Royer and Eric Astorgue
Art Directors: Marion André and Aurore De Sousa
Copywriter: Sandra Mac Millan
Art Buyer: Victoria Vingtdeux
Illustrator: Timothy Durand

Mainstream American marketing doesn't like to touch pornography at all, but this French campaign for pay-cable TV provider Canal+ revels in it—in amusingly offbeat fashion.

The agency, BETC, wanted to communicate that Canal+ now has gathered together the best porn content, leaving other providers a bit … empty-handed. So, it filmed mock sex scenes—with real porn stars—but with only one of the two people present.

The spots are definitely NSFW. Or as the U.S.'s bravest (though not this brave) pay cable network might put it, they would certainly make for awkward family viewing.

"Playing with the caricatures of porn, in terms of music, decor and style, the films star real porn actors," the agency says. "Even though they seem to be enjoying the sultry scenes, it's hardly A-list stuff. But hey, how could it be when the premium porn has gone to Canal+?"

The best part might be the digital element. Canal+ created a special site (also NSFW) where they've loaded GIFs made from the four ads—and added "X" buttons that you can press, repeatedly, to see absurd props added to the scenes.

Share at your peril.

CREDITS
—Film
Client: Canal+
Client Management: Guillaume Boutin, Audrey Brugère, Élise Lacroix, Eugénie Rodrigues
Agency: BETC
Agency Management: Guillaume Espinet, Elsa Magadoux, Mathilde Lançon, Marion Leprêtre
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Creative Directors: Eric Astorgue, Jean-Christophe Royer
Art Directors: Aurore De Sousa, Marion André
Copywriter: Sandra Macmillan
TV Producers: Michel Teicher, Martin Revol
Production House: Rita Films
Sound Production: The
Director: Blacktool

—Web
Client: Canal
Client Management: Guillaume Boutin, Audrey Brugère, Élise Lacroix, Eugénie Rodrigues
Agency: BETC
Agency Management: Guillaume Espinet, Elsa Magadoux, Mathilde Lançon, Marion Leprêtre
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Creative Directors: Eric Astorgue, Christophe Clapier
Art Directors: Antoine Montes, Sarah Taieb
Copywriter: Sandra Macmillan
Development: 60 FPS
Producer: Jean-Briac D'Augustin

One reason people go for over-the-top (OTT) services like Netflix is you don't have to worry about channels anymore. You can just run it and have this broad array of awesome content at your fingertips. 

Barring HBO, channels are too dispersed to put up much of a fight against that kind of variety. They're niches, and if you don't fit into theirs, it isn't likely you'll visit the channel all that often. 

Then there are bundles. Bundling is one of the things millennials would like to see vanish—you're paying for a few channels you like, and getting a whole bunch you don't care about. 

Even so, French network Canal+ has just released an energetic little ad that makes bundles feel a lot like ... well, Netflix, frankly. 

"Kitchen," created by BETC Paris, takes place in a bustling kitchen. You know something is off when the eggs cracked over a bowl don't drop yolks but shrieking velociraptors, ready for battle. Another cook walks by with a steaming city on a hot plate, while yet another scoops a tin of soccer players out with a spoon, like caviar. 

There's more where this came from. A wriggling cartoon character is sliced into colorful pieces, and a car chase ends tragically when one lands in a mound of flour ... and the other is snapped up to be grated. Meanwhile, a carton marked "series" is set on the table, revealing warriors on ice waiting to be shelled.

What the hell is cooking here? 



"Great channels make great TV," the ad concludes over the satisfying thud of an oven door closing. 

"We wanted to show that, with the best content, you can make the best TV. The cooking analogy seemed logical," co-creative director Jean-Christophe Royer tells AdFreak.

"With TV, you have a ton of channels, but none that are actually good," adds co-CD Eric Astorgue. "But with Canal, you've got nothing but good channels. Even if you have just 30, at least they're good."

"The idea is cool, the direction perfect. But conceptually, the angle isn't revolutionary," admits Royer. "We just wanted to find a way to convey all this great stuff. And with the kitchen, you also have that notion of the French Touch"—one of BETC's central tenets.

"Canal+ has always been proud of its role as a French network, even internationally. There's always this quality of assuming your Frenchness—even in the case of 'The Bear.' We're not trying to be Anglo-Saxon, and putting the kitchen in a big restaurant highlights French savoir-faire," Royer says.

If you ever watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit, you'll feel its spirit here—that mix of animated chaos with real-life mundanity. Directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, with effects by Unit Image, "Kitchen" has been shared nearly 70,000 times on Facebook alone. 

The music is also meant to capture the attention of French fans: It's Vladimir Cosma's "L'aile ou la cuisse" ("The Wing or the Thigh"), from a 1970s comedy film by the same name, which follows the hijinks of a retired chef's son who inherits his dad's business (but really wants to join the circus).

So, there's a lot here to attract the attention, and not since Canal+'s "The Bear" have we felt this kind of revitalized energy out of the network. 

More important, it tells a story about what bundles have to offer: When you order one, you're not just paying for diversity to suit your moods. You're helping to underwrite a lot of content that isn't for you—networks and shows that wouldn't otherwise get the chance to exist.

And while we're not sure that message is particularly resonant for a generation that grew up with YouTube and really just wants to pay for what they want, it's worth hearing anyway, if only so we can reflect on how OTT content bundles—like Amazon Prime and Netflix—won't be all that different from what we're leaving behind. 

Still hungry? Check out the making-of below. It's just as fun as the final product.



CREDITS
Client: Canal+
Brand Managers: Guillaume Boutin, Audrey Brugere, Jordane De Villaret, Eugenie Rodrigues
Agency: BETC
Agency Managers: Bertille Toledano, Guillaume Espinet, Mathilde Lançon, Elsa Magadoux, Sophie Gustinelli, Marie Chapuis
Executive Creative Director: Stéphane Xiberras
Creative Directors: Jean-Christophe Royer, Eric Astorgue
Strategic Planner: Guillaume Martin
Traffic: Elodie Diana
Music Creative Director: Christophe Caurret
TV Producer: Isabelle Menard
Production Company: Partizan
Sound Production: Schmooze
VFX: Unit Image
Post Production: Royal Post
Director: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet
D.O.P.: Damien Morisot