Bring back the days of Mitterand and .. oh, wait. Never mind.

the Frence special forces are on their way to teach Ryanair a lesson.

I do hope they don't have an aircraft called Rainbow Warrior

"Sarko has not as yet enjoyed even a single night in Paris"

sob!

Well, I suspect they're more annoyed by the fact that according to rumours in recent times, they've missed out on getting RyanAirs cheap flights.

MOL is a nasty piece of work but you've got to admit he can be very amusing at times.

This is what you get when you are too cheapskate to employ a proper advertising agency. A lot of low budget, ahem, "easy" companies seem to fall into this trap.

This wouldn't be acceptable in the UK, but in France this is a stupid thing to do, because they really don't do the whole personal life being brought into politics thing.

What about the I/T angle? How about some photoshop work with funnier tag line?

>/ coat please

Of course, 'occasions' in French could be translated as 2nd-hand goods as well...

Good idea. I can supply a high res scan, as I got the ad in "Le Parisien" dated yesterday :)

PH as she is the closest thing El Reg has to Carla "The Maneater" Bruni...

This is seriously wrong. If the two people in the photograph (President of France + fiancee or whoever) did not give permission for this ad, then this is effectively libel. The worst part is the thought bubble issuing from Carla Bruni - portraying her as specifically promoting this product. If this sort of thing is allowed, what's to stop a breakfast cereal company from plastering Angelina Jolie's face all over their product packets, for example? Add to this the fact that if the individual concerned actually does anything legal about it, all it does is draw free publicity to the advert - a fact that these companies egregiously exploit.

What should happen to companies that do this is that all their assets are seized, *including all private assets of the marketing people responsible for the ad*, and the company shut down, no matter how big it is. That's a big stick, but it is warranted by the blatant disregard for a person's right not to be globally associated with a product, which they may never have used, which they might not want to recommend, and which ruins their chances to be recognised for themselves, instead of everyone thinking "Oh that's the guy/girl from the such-and-such ad" every time they see him/her. Such opportunistic exploitation needs to be stopped now by the strongest measures.

"Ryanair, of course, won't give un cuss d'un tinker what Sarkozy thinks of the ad" ?

Is that even english ?

It's not remotely french, at least.

"won't give un cuss d'un tinker" ?

If you like, post the sentence in english and I'll give you that in french for the extra style points.

But this, is beyond my understanding...

@Rob Crawford: What exactly are the French special forces going to do? The only thing I could picture in my mind was them using a modified helicopter to deliver them onto a Ryanair 747. Of course, once onboard the 747 the highly-trained warrior-killers will waste no time in immediately, unconditionally and totally surrendering to Ryanair on behalf of the French Republic.

Fraser, don't ever go into advertising as you seem to think that having half of Europe's press talking about your add is a failure. Ryanair's objective was to let people know about their seat sale - job done, well done, and no they won't alienate potential customers because they used a politician, that's irrelevant.

Now, if you knew anything about Sarko you'd know that he's already criticized by various French press for flaunting his private life in public. He sees himself as a bit of a rock star and loves being the center of attention. The French don't give a sod one way or the other.

Dam, I think Lester could care less about whether it's real French or not. No doubt, Google Translation or Babelfish was used.

:-)

I have no intention of going into advertising and I'll concede that if the sole objective of advertising is getting your name across as much media as possible they have done quite well here. But: just because some of the French press are criticising Sarco doesn't mean that all of the French criticise him, there is a very strong cluture of keeping personal life and politics apart in France, dispite Sarco having been rather more public than is usually the case the rest of the French politicians will not be happy about this (dispite what they say publicly) and you don't want to wind up the ruling class the wrong way, especially as a foriegn company... On top of this, they are attributing words in an advert to someone who has nothing to do with their company, this again is pretty bad form. In the UK the ASA would get this pulled instantly (it's a shame adverts don't have to be pre-approved by them, then we wouldn't have today's Ryanair "naughty schoolgirl" ad) in the UK, you can't even have someone impersonating someone else in an advert, let alone using someone's image without their consent.

So, overall:

10/10 for press coverage etc.

0/10 for ethics, quality of advet (it's shit) and advert likely to cause court case etc.

@ Math Campbell

erm... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969

A tad more difficult than an embassy, don't you think? ;-P

Aren't they the wankers that tried to sue me, you, and everyone in the UK (ie, the taxpayers) by suing the government because they dared introduce a few more checks due to a threat of terrorism and their planes had to wait a bit longer on the tarmac?

Did they ever manage to do this, or was this more "publicity". Tossers.

It's "Couldn't give a tinkers cuss" - a really old English expression all he's done is "Franglaisised" it. pffff kids today.

Its an ad for a fucking budget airline. It uses two of the most public people in France in what the yanks would call a "fair use" manner. As to the schoolgirl advert, the page three tarts are showing more within the same "paper".

Ethical advertising extends as far as not making a blatantly false claim. Ads for airlines, even ryanair, pale in comparison to ads for booze and fags which will actually damage your health.

Have you guys not heard of "Private Eye"? Every fortnight it's packed full of similar pictures of the in/famous saying or thinking things that they actually *didn't*.

This is called satire.

And whilst this advert might not be to everyone's tastes, it exhibits some of the hallmarks of a topical, vaguely satirical article.

And, I am told, the Froggies love it. Allegedly.

Someone else who obviously hasn't heard of franglais.

Paris - cos even she knows a joke when she sees one ...

"..what the yanks would call a fair use manner... Ethical advertising extends as far as not making a blatantly false claim."

So I take then it you'll have no objection to my stealing your Myspace photo (or that of your girlfriend/SO), and using it to promote our book-sales website? With a speech bubble coming out of your mouth saying "Buy all your books from here - they've got books nobody else has!"? No false claims there, since our site does in fact have exclusive books.