ARCHIVELe Trefle Wild Trip Finds Comfort in the Wild
Le Trefle's "Wild Trip" is a 2016 French film advertisement, created by Leo Burnett Paris, in which a woman on a back-to-nature weekend refuses to surrender one domestic comfort — her Le Trefle toilet paper — positioning the household product as an indispensable pleasure rather than a utilitarian staple.
Published in France in September 2016, the campaign centres on a deceptively simple creative premise. A couple retreats to a nature setting. The man embraces the back-to-basics spirit wholeheartedly. The woman does too — up to a point. Le Trefle, specifically, is the non-negotiable she carries with her into the wild. The narrative structure is economical and precise: the product is never positioned as an embarrassment or an afterthought, but as the one civilised luxury worth smuggling into the wilderness. That reframe — from commodity to comfort one cannot do without — is the campaign's strategic and emotional core.
In France, where household product advertising frequently defaults to functional comparisons and price messaging, the campaign represents a deliberate departure toward character-driven storytelling. The film medium was chosen as the primary vehicle, allowing the narrative to breathe across a single cohesive asset. Leo Burnett Paris, the agency behind the work, brought the same creative platform it had developed for Le Trefle since 2013 into a fresh scenario, extending a proven brand voice rather than reinventing it. The campaign sits within the house and garden category and carries the hallmarks of the agency's broader philosophy: human insight expressed through accessible, warmly observed comedy. The Clapboard Score for "Wild Trip" is 63 out of 100.
ARCHIVELe Trefle's strategic challenge in 2016 was one familiar to household product brands across France: how to generate emotional salience in a category defined by price promotion and functional sameness. "Wild Trip" addresses that challenge by anchoring the brand to a feeling — the quiet, non-negotiable comfort of softness — rather than to a specification or a price point.
The campaign is a direct extension of a creative platform Leo Burnett Paris first established for Le Trefle in 2013, when the agency produced "Emma," a campaign that won Gold at the 2013 Effie France Awards in the Hygiene, Beauty and Health category, according to adobomagazine.com. That heritage matters: "Wild Trip" is not a reset but a refinement, demonstrating that the underlying consumer insight — that softness and comfort carry genuine emotional weight — had proven durable enough to sustain a multi-year creative strategy.
In France, the tissue and toilet-paper market features competition from globally distributed brands including Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble, both identified by businesswire.com as principal global tissue manufacturers operating across European markets. Against these competitors, Le Trefle's approach of building a distinct, locally resonant character rather than competing on technical claims reflects a considered positioning strategy. The French advertising market in this period showed growing appetite for narrative-led brand films, and Leo Burnett Paris's decision to deploy a single-asset film campaign — rather than a fragmented multi-format execution — signals confidence in the storytelling itself as the primary persuasive mechanism. The wild trip scenario also functions as a neat dramatisation of brand truth: if you would pack it for a camping weekend, it must matter more than you admit.
Vincent Lobelle directed "Wild Trip" for Leo Burnett Paris. Lobelle is noted by cbnews.fr for his prior direction of Sopalin's "The Chosen One" and a campaign for Meetic, a body of work that establishes his fluency in warm, observational comedy — the precise register "Wild Trip" requires. His direction keeps the film grounded in behavioural realism: the comedy derives from recognisable human stubbornness rather than exaggeration, which preserves the emotional credibility of the brand's comfort claim.
Creative direction was led by Xavier Beauregard, with Jean-Francois Le Marec serving as Copywriter and Laetitia Chretien as Art Director, as documented on clapboard.com. The creative team's construction of the script reflects an understanding that the strongest household product advertising creates a moment of self-recognition in the viewer. The woman's refusal to abandon Le Trefle is not presented as comic irrationality but as entirely reasonable behaviour — a framing that flatters the audience and validates the product simultaneously.
The film's visual grammar reinforces the strategic tension. Nature is photographed as genuinely appealing: the wild is not hostile, merely inconvenient in one specific respect. This prevents the campaign from reading as anti-outdoors and keeps the brand's position clean — Le Trefle is not saying the wilderness is bad, only that certain comforts are worth preserving within it. The production company and post-production house for "Wild Trip" are not identified in available sources. The campaign was published in France in September 2016, with at least one source, cbnews.fr, noting a television release as early as August 2016, suggesting a phased broadcast rollout ahead of the formal campaign date.
No verified performance data for "Wild Trip" is publicly available. No sales lift, market-share change, brand awareness figures, or return-on-investment data have been disclosed for the campaign, and no entries or wins at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards have been recorded for this specific execution, according to Clapboard's research.
In the absence of disclosed metrics, structural effectiveness offers a meaningful analytical frame. The campaign's creative lineage is itself a form of evidence: the "Emma" platform from which "Wild Trip" descends won Gold at the 2013 Effie France Awards, as reported by adobomagazine.com, indicating that Leo Burnett Paris's narrative approach for Le Trefle had already demonstrated measurable commercial effectiveness before "Wild Trip" was produced. A campaign built on a proven, awarded platform carries lower strategic risk than a wholly new creative direction, and the decision to extend rather than replace that platform suggests the brand and agency both had confidence in the underlying model.
The single-asset film format concentrates creative impact rather than diluting it across executions, a structural choice that tends to favour memorability in the French television environment. The Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its creative premise competently and with genuine warmth, while stopping short of the kind of formal or conceptual ambition that distinguishes industry-leading household product advertising. For a category in which emotional differentiation is difficult to sustain, "Wild Trip" achieves what it sets out to do in France: it makes Le Trefle feel like a brand with a point of view.
"Wild Trip" is a 2016 French television film created by Leo Burnett Paris for Le Trefle. It depicts a woman on a nature weekend who refuses to leave her Le Trefle toilet paper behind, positioning the household product as an indispensable comfort. The campaign launched in France in September 2016.
Leo Burnett Paris created Wild Trip for Le Trefle in 2016. Creative Director Xavier Beauregard led the team, with Jean-Francois Le Marec as Copywriter and Laetitia Chretien as Art Director. Director Vincent Lobelle, known for observational comedy work in France, helmed the film production.
Wild Trip extends a Leo Burnett Paris creative platform established in 2013 with the "Emma" campaign. According to adobomagazine.com, "Emma" won Gold at the 2013 Effie France Awards. Wild Trip is a narrative evolution of that same brand voice, not an entirely new creative direction for Le Trefle.
No awards have been recorded for Wild Trip at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, D&AD, The One Show, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, according to Clapboard's research. The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, indicating competent execution within the French household product category.
Vincent Lobelle directed Wild Trip for Leo Burnett Paris. As noted by cbnews.fr, Lobelle previously directed Sopalin's "The Chosen One" and a Meetic campaign in France, establishing his reputation for warm observational comedy — the tone central to Le Trefle's Wild Trip creative approach.
No verified business results for Wild Trip are publicly available. No sales, market-share, or brand-awareness figures have been disclosed for the campaign in France. Structural analysis suggests the film's narrative approach and its roots in an Effie-awarded platform gave it a credible foundation for effectiveness.
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