Citroën is offering to install branded speed bumps* across rural France to improve roads and revive its reputation as a company ‘for the people’.
The automaker will use part of its marketing budget to pay for the replacement of existing, sub-standard speed bumps with branded upgrades in cash-strapped municipalities.
As part of a pilot for the Bump Boards initiative, Citroën has already replaced two outdated speed bumps in the commune of Issoire and it is now inviting other municipalities to apply online for the same treatment.
According to BETC Paris, which came up with the idea for Citroën, rubber speed bumps were banned in France in 2009 for becoming dangerously slippery when wet, but many local governments lack the resources to bring their infrastructure up to code.
(A spokesperson for BETC supplied MediaCat UK with this document from the Drivers’ Defence League, which references a 2009 ban on speed bumps made of vulcanised rubber, but we could not find any other information online. We did, however, find references to a 2022 legal action brought against French ministers that complained many speed bumps in France exceeded the 10cm height limit.)
Mehdi Benali, managing director at BETC, told MediaCat UK that the agency came up with the idea for the Bump Boards after Citroën requested a campaign that would boost its brand without focusing on specific products.
After consulting the brand’s history, BETC learned that André Citroën, who founded the company in 1919 with the intention of mass producing affordable vehicles after World War I, had paid for tens of thousands of branded road signs — directional and instructional — to be installed across France in the 1920s.
‘So this idea of the Bump Boards came from discussions about how we could use a portion of our marketing budget, just like Andre did 100 years ago, to create advertising material that is non-traditional and that also contributes to the wellbeing and the safety of the people who are on the road,’ said Benali.
‘Obviously, it generates curiosity, which is good for us,’ added Benali. ‘Citroen is a big brand but doesn’t have the biggest media budget. So we are also kind of trying to find ways to generate that effect without having to spend millions on advertising.’
Innovative media placements — putting marketing messages on everyday objects — often attract disproportionate levels of attention. A 2022 meta-analysis of 26 studies published in the Journal of Advertising found they outperform regular media at strengthening brand associations and increasing purchase intent, especially when the placement reflects the brand or product.
Benali said Citroën will only pay to replace existing speed bumps, not install new ones, which reduces the risk of the automaker being associated with something drivers find annoying.
Citroën plans to allocate a budget for the campaign, though Benali said the final amount would depend on the response from France’s municipalities. The cost of installing a Bump Board during the test-run in Issoire, according to Benali, was approximately €10,000.
As for the return on investment, Benali said success won’t be measured with traditional media metrics or commercial KPIs.
‘To us, the success of the campaign is simply the amount of applications that we get from mayors and cities,’ he explained. ‘We’re not measuring this with numbers, we’re measuring this with the level of interest and the level of impact it’s going to actually generate at the local level.’
*In France, speed bumps are colloquially referred to as ‘dos d’âne’, which means ‘donkey’s backs’.
