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Intermarche I Want to be With You Captured a Nation at Its Door
Intermarché's 'I Want to be With You' is a one-minute film released on the evening of 10 May 2020 — the day before France ended its first COVID-19 confinement — created by agency Romance to mark the emotional threshold between isolation and reunion, using only images of residential doorways and a Nina Simone recording, with no visible people and no spoken narration.
The campaign emerged directly from a specific moment in France's public experience. For approximately two months, Intermarché had continued operating its stores through the strictest phase of the country's COVID-19 lockdown, ensuring French households had access to essential groceries throughout the period of confinement. As restrictions began to ease, the brand chose not to communicate operationally. Instead, Romance crafted a message of hope addressed to the collective emotion of a nation that had spent weeks staring at its own front door.
In France, the campaign was published under its French-language title 'Je désire être avec vous', a direct reference to the Nina Simone song used on the soundtrack, identified in production records as 'Vous Êtes Seuls Mais Je Désire Être Avec Vous', according to adruby.com. The film runs for approximately sixty seconds and contains a single media asset — the film itself — with no supporting print, outdoor, or digital executions documented in the public record. Its release timing was precise and deliberate: aired the evening before confinement ended, the film positioned Intermarché not as a retailer announcing a return to normality but as a presence that had witnessed and shared the loneliness of lockdown alongside its customers. The campaign sits at the intersection of public interest and retail services, speaking to both the civic and commercial dimensions of a grocery chain that remained open when much of France did not.
Intermarché grounded 'I Want to be With You' in a single consumer truth: that the end of France's first COVID-19 confinement was not merely a logistical event but a profound emotional one. The strategic decision to lead with feeling rather than function reflects a brand positioning that Romance had been developing for Intermarché since at least 2017, when the agency created 'L'Amour, l'amour', a three-minute narrative film that won the 2018 Grand Effie France, according to effie.org. That earlier campaign established Intermarché's brand platform — described by romance-agency.com as 'Helping the French Eat a Little Better Every Day' — and demonstrated that emotion-led storytelling could produce measurable commercial results, with sales increasing by more than four percent following the 2017 campaign, according to romance-agency.com.
By May 2020, the French grocery sector was operating in exceptional conditions. The global grocery market experienced growth of approximately ten percent in 2020 compared with approximately two and a half percent in 2019, driven by the shift from restaurant consumption to home cooking during lockdown periods, according to essfeed.com. In France, Intermarché competed directly with E.Leclerc and Carrefour, both of which maintained significant market presence throughout the confinement period, according to kantar.com. Against that competitive backdrop, a campaign oriented around shared national experience rather than price or range offered Intermarché a form of differentiation that transactional advertising could not replicate.
The decision to release the film the evening of 10 May 2020 — confirmed by culturepub.fr — made timing itself a strategic tool. The ad did not celebrate the lifting of restrictions after the fact. It anticipated the reunion, standing with the audience at the precise threshold between yesterday's loneliness and tomorrow's promise. That positioning turned a grocery chain's communication into an act of public interest, one that acknowledged what people had endured before asking anything of them as consumers.
Director Katia Lewkowicz shaped 'I Want to be With You' around a single visual decision: the film shows no people. Every frame in the sixty-second work is composed around residential doorways — the threshold space that had become, during France's COVID-19 lockdown, both a boundary and a symbol of what lay beyond it. The choice transforms an absence into a statement, asking viewers to populate each door with their own anticipated reunion rather than witnessing someone else's.
Production on the film was conducted under active lockdown conditions. According to adruby.com, Lewkowicz directed the project remotely via FaceTime, coordinating with the production company Grand Bazar without being physically present on any of the locations captured in the film. That constraint became part of the work's authenticity: the means of making it mirrored the circumstances it described. When reflecting on the film, Lewkowicz stated, as documented at adsoftheworld.com, that all credit belongs to Nina Simone and the song 'Je suis seule mais je désire être avec vous', noting that the recording 'resonates in us, and on the images of the film.'
The creative team at Romance included Executive Creative Director Alexandre Hervé, Copywriter Philippe Pinel, and Art Director Julien Rézette, according to romance-agency.com. Chief Executive Officer Christophe Lichtenstein also held a credited role on the project, per romance-agency.com. The narrative approach — classified in the archive record as a narrative film rather than a product demonstration or testimonial — depended entirely on music and image working in unison. Nina Simone's voice provided the emotional declaration that the visuals withheld, and the absence of narration or spoken copy meant that no single interpretation was imposed on the viewer. In a market saturated with COVID-19 ads during 2020, that restraint was itself a creative act.
No verified performance data for 'I Want to be With You' is publicly available in terms of brand lift, reach figures, or sales attribution tied directly to this campaign. Intermarché has not published quantified results for the May 2020 film in any source indexed at the time of this analysis.
Structural analysis, however, supports a reading of the campaign as effective on its own terms. The film was reviewed by Adweek, according to adweek.com, which noted the work in the context of advertising responses to the COVID-19 period — a signal that the campaign reached international industry attention despite originating in France for a domestic grocery audience. The release date itself — the evening of 10 May 2020, confirmed by culturepub.fr and adsoftheworld.com — ensured that the film entered the French media environment at the single moment of maximum emotional relevance, when the end of confinement was imminent but not yet experienced.
The campaign's lineage also provides structural context for its likely effectiveness. The preceding Intermarché and Romance collaboration, 'L'Amour, l'amour', recorded more than thirteen million additional cash receipts in 2017 compared with 2016 and a sales increase of more than four percent, according to romance-agency.com. That precedent demonstrates the commercial viability of the brand's narrative approach in the French retail market. 'I Want to be With You' applied the same emotional grammar to a moment of collective rather than individual experience, extending a proven platform into a public interest register. Within French retail advertising during the COVID-19 period, the film represents one of the more formally disciplined examples of hope-oriented communication produced under active lockdown conditions.
Intermarché's 'I Want to be With You' is a sixty-second film released on 10 May 2020 by agency Romance. It features only images of residential doorways and a Nina Simone recording, with no visible people or spoken narration, marking the end of France's first COVID-19 confinement as a moment of anticipated reunion and hope.
Intermarché released the film the evening before France ended its first COVID-19 lockdown. Timing was a deliberate strategic choice, positioning the brand at the emotional threshold between confinement and reunion. According to culturepub.fr and adsoftheworld.com, the release date was 10 May 2020, maximising relevance at the precise moment of national anticipation.
Director Katia Lewkowicz directed the film for production company Grand Bazar. According to adruby.com, she directed remotely via FaceTime during the lockdown, unable to attend locations in person. She credited Nina Simone's song as the emotional core of the work, as documented at adsoftheworld.com.
Romance created 'I Want to be With You' for Intermarché in 2020. The agency's credited team included Executive Creative Director Alexandre Hervé, Copywriter Philippe Pinel, Art Director Julien Rézette, and CEO Christophe Lichtenstein, according to romance-agency.com. Romance had previously created Intermarché's award-winning 2017 campaign 'L'Amour, l'amour'.
The 2020 film extends a narrative brand platform Romance established with 'L'Amour, l'amour' in 2017, which won the Grand Effie France in 2018 according to effie.org. That earlier campaign increased Intermarché's sales by more than four percent, according to romance-agency.com, demonstrating the commercial foundation underpinning the emotional approach repeated in 2020.
The film uses a Nina Simone recording identified as 'Vous Êtes Seuls Mais Je Désire Être Avec Vous', according to adruby.com. Director Katia Lewkowicz stated, as documented at adsoftheworld.com, that the song resonates through both the music and the images, providing the emotional declaration that the film's people-free visuals deliberately withheld.
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