A bearskin rug became a movie director / CANAL+ "THE BEAR"

The problem

CANAL+ is a premium French pay-TV channel. It was aiming for the positioning of "the more you watch, the more you'll love movies." It had been working with BETC since 2001, and their earlier work "The Closet" was also the most awarded ad in the world according to the 2010 Gunn Report — a truly excellent partnership.

The insight

The whole thing was built on a single idea: the bearskin rug in the living room has watched more movies than any human ever could. The client pushed back, worried it would make viewers look like couch potatoes, but after more than ten rewrites, it landed on the story of "a bearskin rug chasing its dream of becoming a director." It's absurd, but there's real affection in it.

The idea

It opens on a medieval battle scene, making you think you're watching an epic film, and then a temperamental genius director — a bearskin rug named Paul Bearman — shows up on set and starts giving notes on everything. They actually had real actors perform the role, then replaced them with the bearskin rug using CGI afterward — a serious amount of effort poured into a joke.

What happened

The response right after it launched in 2011 was some of the biggest ever seen. At Cannes Lions 2012, it won multiple Grand Prix including one in the Film Craft category, and it also won at D&AD and Clio, making it the most awarded TV ad in Gunn Report history. It got absorbed into French pop culture and kept being used for over a year.

Afterthought

If you came up with the idea of a bearskin rug becoming a movie director, most people would stop right there and call it ridiculous. What makes this ad so impressive is that they rewrote it more than ten times and went all the way to using CGI to pull it off properly. I'd love to do something this ridiculous, seriously, someday too.

Awards

• Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2012

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