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The advert which caused a sensation in France making a French
minister's hair stand on end - the 220 kph turbo publicity
campaign. The message reached a far larger public than
envisaged. The RSCG agency commissioned Jean-Paul Goude to
design a poster of the CX GTi Turbo for the Paris Motor Show. He
took Grace Jones as his model and photographed her with a “CX"
hairstyle, discreetly outlined with a laser beam. As a result of
recent laws passed in France, constructors can no longer base
their campaigns on the performance figures of cars. The Minister
of Transport considered that the neatly-printed "220 kph” figure
contravenes those laws and alerted the press. He couldn’t have
done better - it was all over the papers and the CX Turbo got
the kind of launching that publicists and their clients usually
only dream about.
EDITORIAL
How can one explain the fact that practically the whole of the
mass-media was behind Citroën with regard to the Turbo-poster
affair? The reason can almost undoubtedly be attributed to the
fact that, this time, the French authorities went a little too
far. They have initiated such a great number of laws in order to
convince the public that fast cars have gone out of style, that
in fact, they are asserting the contrary. The categorical
reasoning of a prosaic Administration has a hard time standing
up to the harsh realities: there were 26.56% fewer road
accidents in France between 1972 and 1982, which was the decade
of the government anti-speed campaign. However, the road
accident figures in Germany, for the same period, were reduced
by 38.88% - in spite of the fact that there were no enforced
speed restrictions in that country. The principle of ruling out
the use of speed figures, at a time when constructors are having
to strive hard to compete, does not justify the ban - far from
it. The Administration emphasises its supremacy by not only
limiting speed, but also by limiting freedom of expression. In
this advertising campaign, the words of Lord Byron come to mind:
“For freedom’s battle once
begun, I Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son, Though baffled
oft is ever won.” A noble cause and meaningful word -
freedom.
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