Epica d'Or 2004 (print)

The 2004 print Epica d’Or was won by BDD & Fils, Paris for Les Echos.

Les Echos is a French daily economic newspaper that was recently relaunched with a smaller format, colour images and with more extensive news coverage and commentary than was previously the case.

The relaunch campaign was based on the idea that it is impossible to understand the news without also understanding the underlying economic trends behind it – there are no political, social or cultural events that are independent of economic considerations. This idea is summarised in the claim "understand the economy, understand the world".

He winning campaign consists of four double page ads using images that serve as visual metaphors for related economic trends.

"Shopping" shows a woman trying on sports shoes next to three piles of shoeboxes that resemble a bar chart measuring the number of child labourers in different third-world countries.

"Soft Drinks" superimposes a graph over the profile of a man’s large stomach. The curve of his belly represents the spectacular growth in soft drink advertising expenditures since 1998.

"GMO" shows a demonstrator hurling a smoke bomb at a group of riot police. The trajectory of smoke services as a curve measuring land area where genetically modified crops are planted.

"Tank" uses the long barrel of the a cannon, raised a t an angle of 45°, to show the growth of US oil company stock prices over a period of six months – "understand the economy, understand the world".

The finalist shortlist for the print Epica d’Or included another entry by BDDP 1 Fils, the BMW X 3 "Mix your playground" campaign, and two entries by Abbot Mead Vickers BBDO – Harvey Nichols "Sales" and the Guinness " Rugby" campaign.

After a process of progressive elimination Les Echos eventually seduced a majority of the Epica jury.

Echoes of Reality

by Mark Tungate

"A financial newspaper may not sound like the most thrilling product in the world, but sometimes those are the most gratifying to work on," says Olivier Camensuli, the creative behind the award-winning campaign for French business journal Les Echos. "When you produce something exciting," he explains, "it stands out more."

Camensuli is a refreshingly modest adman. He is quick to stress the contribution of the other team-members: art directors Aurore de Sousa and Laurent Bodson and fellow copywriter Matthew Branning. The creative director was Olivier Altmann, who, like Camensuli himself, has since moved from BDDP & Fils to Publicis. They leave behind them one of last year’s cleverest campaigns.

The advertising agency’s brief was for a campaign that would break alongside the launch of a new design and layout of Les Echos. The paper was relaunched in a smaller format, with the addition of colour images and even more extensive news coverage and commentary than before.

Initially, Camensuli suggested a word game that involved highlighting text in the newspaper to form new, unexpected messages. But the approach was too complicated, and somehow familiar.

"We had a feeling we’d seen it somewhere before, perhaps used by The Guardian in the UK. The reference in this sector is The Economist, so we felt under pressure to come up with something original and intelligent. I’d actually drawn a few rough sketches of graphs and bar charts in my notepad right at the very start, but then rejected the idea as too simple. When we decided the more complex idea wasn’t going to work, we went back to basics. You often find that the simplest solution is the best."

The campaign was based on the idea that it is impossible to understand the news without also understanding the underlying economic trends behind it – there are no political, social or cultural events that are independent of economic consideration. This idea is summarised in the claim "understand the economy, understand the world".

After that it was a case of tracking down illustrations that fitted the team’s visual puns: the cannon of a tank to plot US oil stock prices; the curve of an obese belly to illustrate soft drink advertising expenditure; a hurled smoke-bomb to trace the spread of genetically modified crops; piled shoeboxes playing the part of a bar chart showing the number of child labourers in Third World countries. The belly and the shoeboxes were shot specifically for the agency, but the other two pictures were genuine archive news photos.

"We had to find the photographers and ask their permission to use them – and, in the case of the photo of the guy confronting the riot police, to alter them a little." In the ad, the man has been moved to the left, and the stone he was hurling in the original has been replaced with a trail of smoke.

"We also had to ensure that every one of the examples we used was accurate," Camensuli adds. "Les Echos prides itself on getting its facts right, so it would have been awful if we’d used figures that weren’t correct. We double-checked everything twice before the ads went out. Even so, for various reasons a couple of versions we were considering didn’t make the grade."

Among these was a picture of the Columbia Space Shuttle explosion in 2003. Although Camensuli was proud of the execution, which referred to NASA’s shrinking budget, the client felt that it was a little out of date. The ad appears for the first time in these pages.

Camensuli says that he avidly read Les Echos and other newspapers to seek ideas for the campaign – but he adds that finding inspiration was not difficult. "When we started work on the project, we were right in the middle of the Iraq war, so it was essential to treat that subject. The other subjects were those that appeared time and time again in the newspapers. It’s interesting to note that, when you start looking at current affairs from a business angle, almost every major story has an economic impact – or the other way around."

The Les Echos campaign takes an oblique and witty approach that obliges its audience to look twice, and use a bit of grey matter. In that respect, it ranks with the best The Economist has to offer.

Paris-based journalist Mark Tungate is the author of the book Media Monoliths (Kogan Page).