Cash Converters Bets on Absurdist Humour to Reframe French Finance
Cash Converters launched 'Childbirth, Siamese Twins' in France in April 2018, a two-spot television campaign created by Serviceplan France that used absurdist humour to reposition the brand within the French consumer finance and second-hand retail market.
The campaign comprises two distinct film assets — titled 'L'Accouchement' ('Childbirth') and 'Les Siamois' ('Siamese Twins') — each deploying comic scenarios to communicate the brand's core value proposition around accessible financial services and second-hand goods. Published in April 2018 and running through to November of that year, the work represented what Cash Converters itself described, as reported by franchise.cashconverters.fr, as 'une campagne de publicité en rupture parfaite avec les communications antérieures' — a campaign in complete and deliberate break with all previous brand communications. In France, where consumer trust in financial services providers remains a persistent strategic challenge, the decision to lead with comedy rather than reassurance marked a significant tonal shift. The campaign was planned for primary television distribution beginning in February 2018, according to a press announcement published by cbnews.fr on December 20, 2017, following Cash Converters' selection of Serviceplan as its communications agency and Mediaplus as its media agency. A second press announcement, published on March 19, 2018 and cited by cbnews.fr under the headline 'Cash Converters joue la comédie avec Serviceplan,' confirmed the brand's comedic direction ahead of the campaign's full rollout. The 'Les Siamois' spot was announced specifically on March 23, 2018, per Franchise Cashconverters, as part of the broader effort to reinforce Cash Converters' leadership positioning and brand awareness across the French market. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100, reflecting creative ambition that is partially tempered by the structural challenges of communicating financial services through pure comedy.
Cash Converters entered 2018 with a clear strategic mandate in France: disrupt category conventions. The French consumer finance and second-hand retail sector had long been dominated by communications built on reassurance, price transparency, and functional benefit — a tone shared by major international competitors including FirstCash, which operates pawnbroking and consumer lending services across multiple markets. Against that backdrop, the decision by Cash Converters and Serviceplan France to pursue absurdist humour represented a deliberate act of category differentiation rather than a creative indulgence.
The strategic rationale rested on a consumer insight familiar to financial services marketers operating in France: brands perceived as accessible and non-threatening attract customers who feel excluded or intimidated by conventional banking. By anchoring the campaign to comedic film — a medium with broad reach and emotional memorability — the brand sought to lower the psychological barrier between a potential customer and a financial services provider operating outside the mainstream banking sector. The global pawnbroking market was estimated at approximately forty billion dollars in 2018, according to openpr.com, with Cash Converters reporting that its pawnbroking lending activity was broadly flat and its pawnbroking revenue increased by approximately one point one percent year over year in financial year 2018, according to cashconverters.com. In that context of modest growth, brand differentiation through creative boldness served a direct commercial purpose. Television remained the primary distribution channel for the campaign in France, reflecting the continued strength of broadcast media as a mass-reach vehicle in the French market, where television advertising retains significant share of voice investment across consumer-facing categories.
Creative direction on the 'Childbirth, Siamese Twins' campaign was led by Daniel Perez, who served as both Creative Director and Director on the project. The dual role placed Perez in command of both the conceptual development and the physical realisation of the two spots, a configuration that typically produces stronger tonal consistency between script intent and on-screen execution. The campaign's art direction was handled by Astrid Pinon, with copywriting credits shared between Benjamin Coché and Chloé Rosiaux.
Creative oversight at the agency level was provided by a senior leadership team that included Dimitri Guerassimov and Fabien Teichner as Chief Creative Officers, alongside Hervé Poupon serving as Chief Creative Officer at Serviceplan Paris. Account management across the campaign was led by Stéphane Perrot, Juliette Polaillon, Julie Raynaud, Bruno Bee, and Ronan Pensec, among others. The two film assets — 'L'Accouchement' and 'Les Siamois' — employ escalating comic logic as their primary creative mechanism. Each spot constructs a premise rooted in an extreme or unlikely physical scenario and uses that scenario as a vehicle for communicating the practical relief that Cash Converters' services can provide. The Siamese Twins concept, in particular, uses the inseparability of its central characters as a metaphor for financial entanglement, a conceit that transforms an abstract product benefit into a visceral and memorable image. In France, where comedic advertising in the financial sector remains relatively uncommon, the tonal choice carried inherent risk alongside its potential for standout. The campaign's craft reflects Serviceplan France's positioning as an agency willing to pursue unconventional creative solutions for clients operating in traditionally conservative categories.
No verified performance data for the 'Childbirth, Siamese Twins' campaign is publicly available. Cash Converters has not published audience reach figures, brand tracking outcomes, or sales attribution data connected specifically to this 2018 French television campaign, and no third-party measurement sources have reported results in the public domain.
Structural analysis of the campaign's effectiveness nonetheless yields several observations worth examining. The decision to produce two separate film assets — 'Childbirth' and 'Siamese Twins' — rather than a single execution suggests a media strategy built around frequency management and creative wear-out mitigation, a practical choice for a television-led campaign planned to run across several months in France. The campaign's comedic register is internally consistent across both spots, which reduces the risk of tonal confusion and strengthens brand recall through repetition of a recognisable creative signature. The creative team's depth — encompassing a director-led production approach under Daniel Perez, senior creative oversight from Guerassimov, Teichner, and Poupon, and a full account management structure — points to a campaign built with professional rigour rather than budget opportunism. The Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100 reflects a campaign that demonstrates genuine creative ambition and category disruption but falls short of the execution consistency needed to rank among the strongest financial services advertising produced in France during this period. The absurdist premise carries memorability potential, though the degree to which comedic scenarios translate directly into brand preference within a financial services context in France remains an open question without empirical measurement data.
Cash Converters launched 'Childbirth, Siamese Twins' in France in April 2018. The campaign consists of two comedic television spots — 'L'Accouchement' and 'Les Siamois' — created by Serviceplan France to reposition the brand through humour in the French consumer finance market, marking a deliberate creative break from all previous Cash Converters communications.
Daniel Perez directed the Cash Converters 2018 campaign in France. Perez served as both Creative Director and Director on the project, working under Chief Creative Officers Dimitri Guerassimov, Fabien Teichner, and Serviceplan Paris Chief Creative Officer Hervé Poupon, with art direction by Astrid Pinon and copywriting by Benjamin Coché and Chloé Rosiaux.
Cash Converters used humour to differentiate itself in the French financial services market. The strategy aimed to lower psychological barriers between consumers and a non-traditional financial provider, using absurdist comedy to make the brand feel accessible. The campaign was described as a complete break from Cash Converters' previous communications approach in France.
Cash Converters selected Serviceplan as its communications agency in December 2017. According to cbnews.fr, the appointment was announced on December 20, 2017, with Mediaplus named as media agency. Television distribution of the resulting campaign began in early 2018, with the full 'Childbirth, Siamese Twins' work published in France by April 2018.
The Cash Converters 'Childbirth, Siamese Twins' campaign received a Clapboard Score of 59 out of 100. The score reflects creative ambition and genuine category disruption through absurdist humour in French financial advertising, while noting that execution consistency fell short of the strongest examples of finance sector creativity produced in France during 2018.
The Cash Converters 2018 campaign by Serviceplan France included two film assets. The spots were titled 'L'Accouchement' ('Childbirth') and 'Les Siamois' ('Siamese Twins'), both produced for television distribution in France. The two-asset structure supported frequency management across a campaign planned to run from early 2018 through to November of that year.
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