A Lithe Trickster in Orange Embodies Cointreau's New Slogan

The trickster figure is one of the oldest, most beloved archetypes in human storytelling. It’s best known for having to solve problems it created, and that tend to affect the rest of the world. By sowing chaos, it makes new realities possible … so even when it’s being naughty, it’s hard not to want to side with the trickster. This is why it embodies a principle called the “sacred amoral.”

Hermes, Loki, Anansi and Coyote of the Amerindian tales are of this family. So is Cointreau’s new figure in orange. Orange is the color of childlike exuberance and vitality. It is sometimes also associated with being fickle … an apt color, then, for a modern trickster figure.

“Cointreau Changes Everything,” a new tagline in work by TBWAParis, depicts a mysterious man approaching a building. Just before entering, he stops his watch … and everything stops with it. This suggests he’s divine, unhampered by linear time. He hums as he enters the party. 

What a god does next in a story is the best way of knowing its remit in the color-band of archetype. The music changes, slows as he weaves around the frozen attendees. He weaves chaos with finesse—switching a bartender’s bottle for Cointreau, tipping a man and a woman’s gazes toward one another, lazily tipping a billiard ball out of position. It’s trickster work, all this: tiny chaoses that transform not only a moment but maybe whole trajectories.

With that, he re-enters the elevator and starts his watch. Time ticks on, and strategic havocs find cohesion. “Cointreau changes everything,” the ad wraps.

The work is meant to illustrate how a tiny note of Cointreau can balance a cocktail (or do its opposite), transforming and potentially elevating a libation. It also marks the biggest upgrade to Cointreau’s bottle in the last 140 years, though the recipe remains the same. The spot was directed by Brian Beletic, who chose French dancer and choreographer Kevin Bago for his mischievous Cointreau man.

In addition to evoking the ancient trickster figure—it’s at least 65,000 years old, probably more, if we’re going by the calculus of Harvard Indologist EJ Michael Witzel—Cointreau Man does a nice job of embodying the naturally tricksy nature of alcohol. (There’s a reason the heavy stuff is called spirits!) While there are always two sides to any character, what Cointreau promises is a little naughty fun—the kind that can win a round of billiards, send you to bed with someone new, or, why not, alter your destiny. 

It’s from the small things we can’t plan that destinies change, and that’s what aromatic Cointreau is all about: its capacity to give that cocktail a twist … or utterly ruin it, in the case of wrists that are too heavy in the pour.

“Cointreau Changes Everything” is reinforced by a print campaign that plays on the idea of anamorphosis. All elements of a given set are painted to form a square from a single point of view. Cohesion in chaos. We dig it. Still-lifes were also created to illustrate six essential cocktails; and for countries with different spirits legislation, Alfred Cointreau himself—the sixth generation of the family—will appear in material that teaches cocktail lovers how to make Cointreau-laced margaritas and cosmopolitans.

The work is live in Europe and Asia, and will run in the U.S. come springtime.

CREDITS

Advertiser: Cointreau
Head Advertisers: Fanny CHTROMBERG, Alice HOFFMANN, Julien ZEHNACKER

Agency: TBWAParis 
Agency Executives: Jean-François REISER, Hugo CABRIT, Maëva JORDAN, Zoé LONGUET
Creative Directors: Benjamin MARCHAL & Faustin CLAVERIE  
Strategic Planners: Vincent GAREL, Léa RIVOIRE
Art Purchase (Buyer): Fériel SIMON

TVC:
Artistic Director: Sébastien GUINET
Copywriter: Josselin PACREAU
Production: EXCUSE MY FRENCH SMUGGLER
Producer: Jérôme RUCKI
Production Director: Olivier TAHON
Film Director: Brian BELETIC
Chief OPs: André CHEMETOFF
Head of Production:  Maxime BOIRON
Creative Producer: Lorraine POINCIGNON
Post-production: DIGITAL DISTRICT
Post-producer: Élise GAMBOA & François SCHMIDT
Editor: Walter MAURIOT
Calibrator: Matthieu CAPLANNE
Shooting supervisor: Laurent LARAPIDIE
FX 3D: Yann NICOLAS MATTE
Painting: Quentin MABILLE
Compo Flame: Michael MARQUES
Compo Nuke: Fabrice THUMEREL
Soundtrack: Else
Head of Music & Sound: Olivier LEFEBVRE
Sound Director: Fanny MITHOIS
Music Artistic Director: Ferdinand HUET
Sound Engineer: Matthieu SEIGNEZ
Sound Coordination: Mélanie BOURDET
Business Affairs: Marion LE GULUCHE

PRINT & DIGITAL:
Artistic Directors: Pauline SENECHAULT & Cyrielle DECLAREY

International print: 
Production: WORKINGIRL
Photographer: Arnaud PYVKA @WSM

Evin campaign:  
Production: AKASSI
Photographer / Director: Matthieu DORTOMB @Phom

COCKTAIL RECIPES VISUALS:
Photographer: Louis Dewynter @Brice Pascal-Suisse
Artistic director’s assistant: Clémence PARENT

TVC International Music Credits:
Title: Big Spender (Neumodel Remix)
Songwriters: Dorothy Fields / Cy Coleman
Publishers: Campbell Connelly & Co ltd with authorisation from Campbell Connelly France, all rights reserved.

Music credits for EVIN Cocktail Tutorials:
Music: ” AGITATIONS TROPICALES “
Music by Charles DU GROS DE BOISSEGUIN PAGNIEZ, Tom DAVEAU, David GAUGUE, Hagni GWON, Martin NEUMANN
Lyrics by Charles DU GROS DE BOISSEGUIN PAGNIEZ, Flore BENGUIGUI
© For a While / Moka Music
With kind permission from 22D MUSIC GROUP