LCL Banks On Dagobert (Paris Metro)

Russ Curry, Ministry of New Media

Advertisers don’t seem to have been breaking down the doors to the Media Transport/Metrobus booking office just as much as vandals, hooligans, general riff-raff and various protesters have been breaking the screens themselves, see my post ‘Paris Metro Vandalism‘ back in June.

Apart from RTL’s Back to school campaign recently, the most visible campaign – no pun intended I am sure, Ed has been Samsung telling us how wonderful the screens are that we’re looking at!

However, the vandals do seem to have calmed down now and content themselves to drawing anti-advertising slogans in felt pen on the screens rather than smashing them completely, as they have in the past. Seriously though, bewildered tourists definitely think there’s a grass roots anti-drink campaign going on when they read ‘NO PUB’ (= no advertising) scrawled on the screens.

Anyway, hopefully the agencies will stop being afraid and start using the media creatively.

One advertiser who has been quick to realise the impact of the network is French bank, LCL. It seems that they’ve commandeered the entire network and squeezed out everybody but Samsung – impossible to take the Metro these days without being impressed by their swirling golden question & exclamation marks, with an eye-catching and classy campaign by, who else? Yep Dagobert!

The spots have been designed as an extension of the bank’s existing poster campaign, using a visual language combing elements of a traditional static campaign and a TV ad spot.

Above is the spot promoting the bank’s new “One Euro Bank for Students” aged between 18 and 25.

Below is the ad for the new ‘à la carte’ banking service.

Dagobert’s President, Olivier Debin has always said “Digital signage is the perfect media to communicate brand strategies, combining the efficiency of mass media with the directness of a personalised message… on the condition that the content strategy is conceived for the benefit of the ‘viewer’ ” and he is, as usual, spot on!


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