How Orange and Publicis Conseil Made Phishing Feel Uncomfortably Familiar
Orange's 'Phish Where the Fish Are' is a 2024 French cyberattack awareness campaign created with Publicis Conseil, built around a mockumentary depicting a fictional phishing-kit startup, designed to close the gap between public overconfidence and actual online behaviour when facing cybercrime.
The campaign addresses a striking paradox documented in its own research. According to Orange, seventy-eight percent of French people believe they have the right reflexes when it comes to cyberattacks, yet sixty-five percent still regularly click on malicious links. That disconnect — between felt competence and demonstrated vulnerability — forms the entire strategic and creative foundation of the work. Rather than issue warnings, Orange chose to show the machinery behind the threat: a fictitious but plausible startup designing and marketing phishing kits to amateur fraudsters through platforms including WhatsApp and Telegram.
In France, the campaign launched in a phased sequence beginning June 4, 2024, as reported by Publicis Conseil, with wider activation confirmed on June 13, 2024, according to france.publicisgroupe.com. Orange simultaneously launched a participative cybersecurity platform, cybersecurite.orange.fr, on June 6, 2024, enabling French users to verify or report phishing attempts directly. The press conference introducing the campaign featured Orange Group CEO Christel Heydemann, Orange France CEO Jean-François Fallacher, and Orange Cyberdefense CEO Hugues Foulon, signalling that this was not a routine brand communication but a strategic extension of Orange's cybersecurity business into the consumer market. The campaign marks the first time Orange Cyberdefense, previously dedicated exclusively to enterprise clients, offered its expertise to individual users across the French market.
Orange identified a structural market shift driving its consumer cybersecurity move. Hacker groups have professionalised rapidly, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, evolving from opportunistic individuals into organised operations that build, package, and sell phishing kits as commercial products. These tools are accessible to virtually anyone through mainstream messaging platforms, lowering the technical barrier for cybercrime to near zero. For Orange, this shift created both a threat to its customers and an opening for a new service category in France.
The global cybersecurity market was valued at approximately one hundred eighty-seven billion US dollars in 2024, according to market research cited across industry sources, with the consumer segment of that market representing a distinct and growing opportunity. In France specifically, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, known as ENISA, has consistently documented rising incident volumes across member states, with phishing remaining the dominant attack vector against individuals. This context made the French market particularly receptive to a campaign framing cybersecurity not as a technical specialty but as an everyday consumer need.
Competitors in the broader consumer cybersecurity space in France include Gen Digital, whose brands Norton and Avast address individual users with antivirus and identity protection, and McAfee, which markets scam and identity protection directly to consumers. Orange's strategic differentiation rests on the credibility of Orange Cyberdefense, an enterprise-grade capability being redirected toward French households, combined with Orange's existing status as one of the country's most recognised telecommunications providers. Where competitors sell software, Orange is positioning itself as an integrated cybersecurity partner with infrastructure-level expertise, a distinction that 'Phish Where the Fish Are' communicates through demonstration rather than declaration.
Urbania Productions produced the mockumentary at the centre of the campaign. The film adopts the visual and structural grammar of a corporate documentary, following the daily routines of a fictional startup whose product is phishing kits — ready-made tools that allow buyers with no technical background to execute convincing cyberattacks. The creative decision to frame cybercrime as a startup culture story is deliberate and precise: it reflects the actual organisational evolution of hacker groups while using a format that French audiences associate with legitimate business storytelling.
Marco Venturelli, Global CCO and CEO of Leo, CEO and CCO of Publicis Conseil, and CCO of Publicis Groupe France, oversaw the creative direction of the campaign, as identified by france.publicisgroupe.com and publicisconseil.fr. The mockumentary draws directly from real-life testimonials from cybercriminals, grounding its fictional framing in documented behaviour. The result is a film that functions simultaneously as satire, public information, and brand communication — each register reinforcing the others without the tonal inconsistency that tends to undermine cause-adjacent advertising.
The campaign's distribution strategy was constructed to replicate the mechanics it was critiquing. A network of influencers with expertise in cybersecurity and technology posted excerpts from the documentary across their social channels in France without immediately disclosing their connection to Orange. This covert seeding phase was designed to generate authentic engagement and conversation before the full reveal, creating a moment of audience recalibration when Orange's involvement became clear. That structural choice — using the logic of deception to expose deception — gave the campaign a conceptual coherence that extended beyond the film itself. The full documentary was revealed the following morning after the influencer seeding phase, presented at an Orange press conference attended by senior leadership.
No independently verified third-party performance data for 'Phish Where the Fish Are' is publicly available at the time of publication. Orange and Publicis Conseil have not released figures covering reach, earned media value, platform views, or conversion metrics for cybersecurite.orange.fr in connection with this campaign.
Structurally, however, the campaign carries several effectiveness signals that inform qualitative assessment. The phased launch — covert influencer seeding followed by a high-profile press event with C-suite executives from Orange Group — maximised the probability of earned media coverage in France across technology, business, and consumer press. The launch of a functional platform on June 6, 2024 created a measurable behavioural endpoint beyond brand awareness, giving the campaign a utility layer that pure awareness work typically lacks. The mockumentary format, grounded in real criminal testimony, is designed to produce a specific cognitive response: recognition of one's own vulnerability, which is demonstrably more effective at driving protective behaviour than abstract risk warnings, according to communication research in the cybersecurity domain.
The campaign also benefits from its competitive positioning in the French market. By deploying Orange Cyberdefense's enterprise credibility in a consumer-facing creative format, the work claims territory that neither Gen Digital nor McAfee can easily contest on the same terms in France. Clapboard rates 'Phish Where the Fish Are' at 63 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic alignment and creative originality tempered by the absence of publicly verified performance outcomes.
'Phish Where the Fish Are' is a 2024 French cybersecurity awareness campaign by Orange and Publicis Conseil. It centres on a mockumentary depicting a fictional phishing-kit startup and was accompanied by the launch of cybersecurite.orange.fr, a platform allowing French users to verify or report phishing attempts, as documented by Orange.
Urbania Productions produced the mockumentary. Creative leadership came from Marco Venturelli, CEO and CCO of Publicis Conseil and CCO of Publicis Groupe France, according to france.publicisgroupe.com. The film drew on real-life testimonials from cybercriminals to depict a fictional startup selling phishing kits, as confirmed by Orange.
Orange used covert influencer seeding to mirror the deceptive mechanics of phishing itself. Influencers posted documentary excerpts without disclosing their Orange connection, generating authentic conversation before the full reveal. This structural choice reinforced the campaign's core message about how convincing modern cybercrime has become in France and elsewhere.
The campaign addresses a documented gap: according to Orange, seventy-eight percent of French people believe they have correct cyberattack reflexes, yet sixty-five percent still regularly click on malicious links. This overconfidence paradox is the strategic foundation of the entire campaign and the primary insight driving the mockumentary's creative framing.
Clapboard rates 'Phish Where the Fish Are' at 63 out of 100. The score reflects strong strategic alignment between the mockumentary format and Orange's consumer cybersecurity objectives, alongside creative originality in France's telecommunications advertising landscape, moderated by the absence of publicly verified campaign performance metrics.
The campaign marks the first time Orange Cyberdefense, previously focused exclusively on enterprise clients, extended its expertise to individual French users. The mockumentary and the cybersecurite.orange.fr platform together serve as the creative and functional entry points for this new consumer-facing cybersecurity offer from Orange in France.
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