Renault Clio - Advertising

Advertising

• In the United Kingdom, the Clio was advertised on television using the characters "Nicole" (a flirtatious young French woman played by Estelle Skornik) and "Papa" (her somewhat slow-witted father played by Max Douchin). The 1994 advert featured Vincent Cassel as Nicole's boyfriend. The commercials were very popular and in the final one of the series actually featured Bob Mortimer and Vic Reeves, in a sequence parodying The Graduate. In 2000, the 1991 commercial "Interesting" was named the 12th best television commercial of all time, in a poll conducted by The Sunday Times and Channel 4. Sound clips of the advert were played repeatedly on The Chris Moyles Show when it was discovered Comedy Dave and his girlfriend had named their newborn daughter Nicole .

• In 1999, a television advert was launched worldwide for the Renault Clio MTV Limited edition featuring a man who was saying "Get up ah!" all the time, it was actually the only sound he can hear from a Clio passing in front of his house early in the morning, then the advert shows the five men inside the Clio and moving their heads to the rhythm of the James Brown song Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine. Same advertising made in Argentina with the Clio II in 2000 with this song.

• The Clio II advertising campaign featured French model Hélène Mahieu, and French international footballer Thierry Henry for the Clio III, both attempting to define the term va-va-voom, a term later defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "The quality of being exciting, vigorous, or sexually attractive", although they state that it dates from the 1950s. In Brazil, the Clio had a trim level called Va Va Voom. The trim level has been discontinued. In Mexico, Clio II's latest campaign reads "todo por mi Clio" (anything for my Clio), depicting one would give anything to keep one's Clio safe from danger.

• The latest campaign for the Clio features French actress Annelise Hesme and English actor Jeremy Sheffield trying to outdo each other over the superiority of each nation via a range of cultural aspects. This "France Vs Britain" - French Car, British Designers - campaign has been extended across a number of media, for example the French Film, British Cinemas tag for the annual Renault French Film Festival. The music used is Nina Simone's "Sinnerman".