Decathlon is the number #1 sport retailer in France. It has also been the #1 preferred French retail brand for several years.

BETC Shopper has been Decathlon’s partner agency since 2008. It helps the brand to build its communication strategy, on and off line, brand level and commercial level, from TVC to point of sale material. Revealing the value behind its small prices is a long-standing challenge that agency works hard to address on every touch point. With price discounting an entrenched “fad” and a deluge of cheap products undermining perceptions of quality, 2017 was the right time for BETC Shopper to go behind the scenes and make Decathlon’s value for money philosophy understood.

The agency chose new directing duo AB/CD/CD, who had recently signed with La Pac Productions. The pair, CD and CD, have brought their earlier career experience in art direction for Colette, Dargaud, Cartier, Kenzo, and graphic design for magazines like WAD, Vogue and I-D, to direction. This was an asset for BETC.

That ad, called Backstage, is very different from the usual fare. It also broke new technical ground. Point of difference and holding its audience’s attention, tick. That was a win-win for Decathlon.

The Stable talked to BETC Shopper creative director, Nicolas Lautier, and directing duo, AB/CD/CD about that.

The Stable: Where did the idea come from and what was the thinking behind its approach?

Lautier: Decathlon is well known brand in France, that provides technical sport equipment for very affordable prices. They work hard every day, from A to Z, to offer the best prices to their consumer.

But when you’re a brand that offers low price equipment, you actually need to tell to the consumer that your products are technologically advanced, designed for a long life. Not just that they’re cheap. Our job was to prove the consumer that at Decathlon, small prices resonate also with high quality products.

The idea came from this very simple problem. That’s why we chose to show all the different steps that lead to Decathlon’s very small prices (from design to R&D, torture test etc).

The 30 second TVC reveals all the different processes hidden behind one the Decathlon product. A 2.99euros backpack. Yes, 2.99e.

Even the format helped us to encapsulate the idea of well-thought product. We wanted a film that makes you think, “Oh…ok, I wasn’t expecting so much work behind this low price.” We could have told this story in a longer format, but we wanted to create an accumulation of scenes that suggested all the work Decathlon does can’t even fit into 30 seconds.

TS: What were your first thoughts when you saw the brief?

AB/CD/CD: The message and idea were very clear and defined. The creative brief was very detailed and open to different paths. Which is great but also tricky.

Yet the script was about experimentations, exploring an aesthetic never done before. That’s a subject we love. In any case, we knew it would lead to something interesting. In our first talks with the creatives and creative director, we understood they were interested in something inventive. That was something the client also wanted to communicate.

TS: What were the technical challenges in making the ad?

AB/CD/CD: The challenge was to create a continuous shot through all the bag experiments. The camera had to be able to travel through a laboratory if passing through a needle hole. And we wanted all live camera, of course. So we started to work on a previz for us to determine the speed of the camera and the size of the installation. On top of that, the voiceover would determine the timings of every scene – therefore their size and shape also. We designed the camera move theoretically until the shoot, then applied it IRL. It eventually worked, even if the post production process was quite intense. It had to stitch the takes together and make everything look perfectly fluid. (Big up to our Paris post house, St Louis.)

The ad was initially launched in France and is now running globally.