How Auchan Agit Turned Employee Stories Into a Brand Manifesto

Serviceplan's Strategic Bet on Authenticity in a Crowded French Retail Market

Auchan occupied a pressured position in the French grocery landscape when the 2018 campaign launched. In France, E.Leclerc held 21.1% of grocery market share in the September–October 2018 period, according to lsa-conso.fr, positioning it as the clear market leader with strong price-competitive messaging. Carrefour held approximately 20.6% of French grocery market share during the same period, per lsa-conso.fr, making the upper tier of the market a tightly contested space where conventional price and range advertising risked disappearing into category noise.

Against that competitive backdrop, Serviceplan France made a deliberate strategic choice to bypass the conventional retail advertising playbook. Rather than competing directly with E.Leclerc and Carrefour on promotional messaging, the agency developed a narrative framework that foregrounded corporate character and human purpose. The insight driving the work was that French consumers were increasingly attentive to the values and behaviour of the companies they shopped with — not merely the prices on shelf. By featuring real Auchan employees rather than actors, and filming in actual stores rather than constructed sets, the campaign made a credibility claim that a conventionally produced advertisement could not replicate. According to house-of-communication.com, the creative team at Serviceplan France explicitly framed the film as a tribute to the entrepreneurial spirit of Auchan's workforce, positioning store employees as daily allies of French consumers rather than anonymous staff. This reframing — from retailer to community actor — gave the brand a differentiated emotional register in a market where Intermarché held 14.4% and Groupe Casino held 11.2% of grocery share in early 2018, per esmmagazine.com, leaving Auchan fighting for relevance across multiple competitive fronts simultaneously.

Michael Lawrence and the Craft Behind Auchan's Employee-Led Manifesto Film

The 90-second manifesto film was directed by Michael Lawrence through production company Wanda Production. Lawrence's approach centred on documentary-adjacent authenticity: real Auchan employees appeared on screen in their actual workplaces, delivering the brand's manifesto through their physical presence and daily actions rather than scripted performance. The decision to avoid actors and studio environments was not merely a strategic one — it shaped every dimension of the film's production, from casting and location scouting to the texture of the final image.

The film's soundtrack reinforced its emotional register. According to clapboard.com, the music track selected was "Prologue" from The Fighters, composed by Hit+Run. The choice of an orchestral, propulsive piece signalled ambition and scale — a deliberate counterpoint to the retail sector's tendency toward upbeat, generic commercial music. Together, the visual grammar of working environments and the score's forward momentum constructed a tone closer to institutional cinema than to conventional retail advertising.

Creative direction came jointly from Dimitri Guerassimov and Fabien Teichner, both Partners and Creative Directors at Serviceplan France. As reported by packshotmag.com, Guerassimov and Teichner stated: "Through this film, we wanted to salute the entrepreneurial spirit of thousands of Auchan employees, daily allies of French consumers." On the client side, Fabienne Mainguy, Director of Auchan Retail France Brand, provided strategic oversight of the communications device, according to lareclame.fr. The collaboration between a newly appointed agency and a client undergoing brand repositioning gave the production an unusual sense of shared conviction — the film's earnestness reads as a genuine expression of an institution choosing to speak plainly about what it believes it stands for in France, rather than a polished brand exercise produced at arm's length.