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BETC and Air France magic some much-needed ooh-la-la

France used to be the best, most glamorous place in the world. The best food, wonderful countryside, Paris the ‘City of Light’ and the prettiest women.

I’m sure the girls are still great – on my fleeting business trips I can’t remember seeing too many – but the food is, for the most part, crap and when it isn’t it’s way over-priced. Paris is still OK but you’re more than ever aware that it’s surrounded outside the peripherique by depressing housing estates inhabited by, among others, disenchanted refugees from what used to be France’s post-Napoleon colonial empire.

So it’s not good. But that was the case, in economics anyway, with the UK in the late 1960s and for twenty odd years thereafter. Economically and socially it was a basket case. When I came to London you had to sidestep IRA bombs just to get on the tube (I’m exaggerating at bit).

But the advertising was brilliant: CDP, BMP, GGT and Howell Henry later on. France, Paris anyway, seems to be a bit like that now. Wonky economy, great agencies.

So after this long intro (some of you may think interminable intro) here’s an ad from BETC Paris for Air France which definitely has some of that old-style ooh-la-la.

This is what La Belle France is all about (or should be).

MAA creative scale: 7 (would be more but it still feels like Fantasy Island).

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