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Audi France Bets on Jekyll and Hyde to Launch the New S6 and S7
Audi's #JekyllAndHyde campaign is a 2019 French film campaign created by Romance agency that uses the classic transformation motif from Robert Louis Stevenson's novella to communicate the dual character of the new Audi S6 and S7 sport sedans — refined executive composure by day, raw performance aggression on demand.
The campaign launched on 16 April 2019 in France, according to documentation held by Ads of the World. Its scope extended across the international Audi range for the new S6, S7, and S8 sport sedans, as reported by packshotmag.com, making the French market the creative origin point for a broader rollout. The campaign comprises two media assets in film format, both archived on Ads of the World and on Clapboard's own platform.
Romance, the Paris-based agency that has held the Audi France account since 2015 per lefigaro.fr, conceived the campaign around a single governing tension: that the Audi S6 and S7 are not one thing but two, and that this duality is a selling proposition rather than a contradiction. In France, where automotive advertising has long competed on emotional register and cinematic ambition, the literary reference gave the campaign an immediate cultural anchor. The #JekyllAndHyde hashtag was built into the campaign title from launch, signalling that the idea was designed to travel across social platforms as well as broadcast channels. The Clapboard Score for this campaign stands at 59 out of 100, reflecting a coherent creative concept executed with craft, though falling short of the benchmark for transformative or culturally defining automotive work.
The Audi S6 and S7 occupy a specific competitive position within the French premium automotive segment. In 2019, Audi sold approximately 1.846 million vehicles globally, according to manager-magazin.de, placing it behind both Mercedes-Benz, which delivered approximately 2.34 million vehicles that year per Jp Reuters, and BMW, which delivered approximately 2.17 million vehicles according to best-selling-cars.com. In this context, Romance's strategic task was not simply to announce new models but to sharpen Audi's emotional distinctiveness against two dominant German rivals in a market where premium credentials are assumed.
The Jekyll and Hyde concept addresses a real consumer tension in the executive performance segment. Buyers of cars like the S6 and S7 are not track-day enthusiasts, nor are they purely status-driven commuters. They are drivers who want both registers available simultaneously — the calm authority of a business sedan and the immediate power response of a sport car. Romance identified this psychological duality as the territory Audi could own without ceding ground to the more overtly aggressive positioning historically associated with BMW's M-series or the formal luxury language that Mercedes-Benz deploys. Alexandre Hervé, who joined Romance as Executive Creative Director following the agency's Audi account win in 2015 per lefigaro.fr, had previously spent eleven years leading creative at DDB Paris according to cbnews.fr, bringing deep category fluency to that strategic framing.
Premium vehicles represented a disproportionate share of industry value in 2019, with premium segments accounting for approximately 14.2% of industry revenue against roughly 8% of global volume, according to digitalagencynetwork.com. In France, that value concentration made the emotional and symbolic dimension of the campaign commercially significant beyond awareness metrics alone.
Alex Courtès directed the #JekyllAndHyde films for Audi, working through production company Insurrection, as documented by packshotmag.com and romance-agency.com. Courtès is a director with a strong track record in high-production-value automotive and music video work, and his involvement signals that Audi and Romance were investing in cinematic quality rather than simply functional product demonstration.
The creative team at Romance was led by Executive Creative Director Alexandre Hervé, with Art Direction handled by William Verdel and Sébastien Mertens, and copy written by Philippe Pinel and Frédérick Lung, as listed in awards documentation held by Ads of the World. Sound production was handled by THE, completing a full production pipeline oriented toward broadcast-quality film delivery. The decision to use two discrete media assets rather than a single hero film is consistent with the dual-model brief — the S6 and S7 are related but distinct, and the campaign architecture reflects that structure.
The Jekyll and Hyde transformation motif gave Courtès a clear visual brief: the films needed to show a vehicle that appears to change its nature rather than simply demonstrate performance features. In the context of the French automotive advertising landscape of 2019, where campaigns from rivals such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz were deploying high-gloss product cinematography with conventional aspirational framing, a narrative grounded in literary transformation offered a genuinely differentiated visual language. The hashtag mechanic embedded in the campaign title — #JekyllAndHyde — also indicates that the creative execution was built with social amplification in mind from the outset, designed to function across the digital ecosystem as well as on traditional broadcast channels in France.
No verified performance data for the Audi #JekyllAndHyde campaign is publicly available. Sales figures, reach metrics, and engagement data specific to this campaign have not been disclosed by Audi, Romance, or any third-party measurement body in publicly accessible sources. The campaign does not appear in the publicly documented award shortlists of Cannes Lions, D&AD, or Eurobest for 2019 based on available records.
Structural analysis, however, points to a campaign with genuine strategic coherence. The insight — that S6 and S7 buyers inhabit two modes and that a car should honour both — is authentic to the segment and difficult for competitors to claim. The literary anchor of Jekyll and Hyde provides instant cultural legibility across the French market without requiring explanation, which is an efficiency advantage in film formats where attention windows are compressed. The two-asset structure maps logically onto a two-model brief, avoiding the creative compromise of a single film trying to serve two distinct vehicles.
Where the campaign's structural limitations emerge is in memorability and distinctiveness at scale. A Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its concept competently but does not push the underlying idea into genuinely unexpected territory. The transformation motif, while apt, is not a novel device in automotive advertising, and the hashtag strategy, though commercially rational, does not by itself elevate the creative ambition. For a brand competing against Mercedes-Benz and BMW in France, where premium automotive advertising is routinely produced at the highest craft levels, competent execution against a sound strategy is a necessary but insufficient condition for lasting brand impact.
The Audi #JekyllAndHyde campaign is a 2019 French film campaign created by Romance agency. It launched on 16 April 2019 to introduce the new Audi S6 and S7 sport sedans. The campaign uses the Jekyll and Hyde transformation motif to express the dual character of the vehicles, combining executive refinement with high-performance capability, as documented by Ads of the World.
Romance, the Paris-based agency, created the Audi #JekyllAndHyde campaign. Romance has held the Audi France account since 2015, according to lefigaro.fr. Executive Creative Director Alexandre Hervé led the creative team, supported by Art Directors William Verdel and Sébastien Mertens, and Copywriters Philippe Pinel and Frédérick Lung, as listed in Ads of the World documentation.
Alex Courtès directed the Audi #JekyllAndHyde films. Production was handled by Insurrection, with sound production by THE, according to packshotmag.com and romance-agency.com. Courtès is known for high-production-value film work across automotive and music video formats. The campaign comprises two media assets, both archived on Ads of the World and on Clapboard's platform.
The Audi #JekyllAndHyde campaign features the new Audi S6 and Audi S7 sport sedans. According to packshotmag.com, the broader campaign scope also covered the new S8. The campaign launched in France in April 2019 and used a dual-model structure, with two separate film assets corresponding to the two featured vehicles.
The Audi #JekyllAndHyde campaign received a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100. This score reflects a campaign with a coherent creative concept and competent craft execution, but one that does not reach the threshold for transformative or culturally defining automotive advertising. No additional verified performance data for the campaign is publicly available from Audi or Romance.
In France in 2019, the Audi #JekyllAndHyde campaign competed against premium automotive advertising from Mercedes-Benz and BMW, both of which outsold Audi globally that year according to manager-magazin.de and best-selling-cars.com. The Jekyll and Hyde literary device offered a differentiated emotional register, though the transformation motif is not a novel device within the broader automotive advertising category.
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