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Renault Travels Back in Time to Drive Us Forward
Our weekly look at great ads from Europe
It feels right to start the year with some nostalgia. In France, Renault and Publicis Conseil give us “For You to Change Nothing, We Change Everything.” Set to a re-orchestration of Robert Palmer’s “Johnny and Mary,” the work meanders through generations of automotive evolution. The people in the cars change little. We arrive in the present with a series of 100-percent electric E-Tech vehicles, each a reimagined icon from the past.
The work is a callback to Renault’s Reagan-era “Les voitures à vivre,” or “Cars for Living,” which was more about speed and energy. This current ad, in contrast, feels bittersweet, as though mourning the passage of time through technology—not just car-tech, but Super 8 cameras and VHS, the keepers of childhoods that are now, literally, just memories. There’s a tacit question here, perhaps more implied than expressly asked: How does one move forward without giving the mulch of our lives a proper goodbye?
“Death Deserves Better” a new platform from Sue Ryder, a palliative care and bereavement charity in the U.K. The accompanying ads by Impero show women quietly watching videos or listening to voicemails of loved ones who’ve recently passed. Such scenes illustrate a statistic: 88 percent of people feel alone in their grief.
Death isn’t something we do well in western culture, and our grief management is even worse. Sue Ryder hopes to bring a collective aspect back to the process, which feels necessary in a time when sorrow feels almost endemic. As a good friend once told us, “Everyone is grieving something.”
Let’s wrap on an emotional uptick. In Russia, people believe life begins again when you welcome the new year in a new apartment. For this reason, housing developer Brusnika took just two days off over a typical 12-day holiday period to ensure more homes were habitable before 2025 kicked off. Created by agency Voshkod, “Because We Know Where You Meet the Next New Year” sees workers preparing spaces while an ambient track plays the homey sounds of folks prepping for the feast to come. It ends with the workers mounting a wreath and a Christmas tree, just as the background voices crescendo.
Angela Natividad is the European markets editor at Muse by Clio. She also writes about gaming and fashion, and whatever else she’s interested in, really. She’s based in Paris and North Italy, so if you’re local, say hi. She might eat all your food.
