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Renault Turns a French Village Into a Living EV Experiment
Renault's '100% electric vehicles town' campaign is a content-led automotive initiative produced by Publicis Conseil and published in France in September 2020, in which the brand supplied every household in the village of Appy, Ariège with a New ZOE electric vehicle to demonstrate the viability of full community-scale clean transportation.
The campaign centres on a real-world experiment rather than a conventional advertising construct. In July 2020, as reported by grandsudinsolite.fr, Renault and Publicis Conseil equipped all 11 households in Appy — a rural commune in the Ariège department of southern France — with New ZOE electric vehicles, home-charging equipment, and access to a public charging station. The initiative was designed to run across a planned three-year period, transforming the settlement into what the brand positioned as France's first fully electric village. This living demonstration gave the subsequent content campaign its narrative foundation: not a CGI vision of a smart city future, but a documented, ongoing social experiment in sustainable mobility conducted within the French automotive landscape.
In France, the campaign arrived at a pivotal moment for the electric vehicle sector. According to the International Energy Agency, Europe as a whole recorded approximately 1.4 million new electric-car registrations in 2020, making it the leading annual EV market globally that year. France contributed meaningfully to that figure, supported by government purchase incentives that intensified demand across the automotive industry. Against that backdrop, Renault's decision to anchor its EV storytelling in a specific, nameable French community — rather than aspirational urban imagery — gave the campaign a documentary credibility that distinguished it from category conventions. The campaign was crafted in French and targeted environmentally conscious consumers and urban-adjacent audiences already attentive to debates around clean transportation and smart city development.
Renault occupies a founding position in the European electric vehicle market. As recorded by media.renaultgroup.com, Renault was among the earliest volume manufacturers to commit to full battery-electric passenger cars, with the ZOE model serving as its core EV product in the French and broader European markets. The '100% electric vehicles town' campaign extends that positioning by shifting the proof point from specification sheets to lived experience, making Appy, Ariège the evidentiary centre of the brand's sustainable mobility argument.
The strategic insight is grounded in a persistent barrier to EV adoption: range anxiety and practical doubt about whether electric vehicles can function as the sole transportation option for real households in real terrain. Rural France, with its dispersed geography and limited public charging infrastructure at the time, represented a deliberate stress test rather than a favourable showcase environment. By choosing Appy — a small, mountainous commune rather than a Paris arrondissement — Publicis Conseil and Renault constructed a narrative that addressed scepticism head-on. According to the International Energy Agency, battery-electric vehicles represented roughly two-thirds of new electric-car registrations in 2020, yet consumer confidence in full electrification outside urban centres remained a documented industry challenge across the automotive sector.
Renault's principal EV competitors in France in 2020 included Volkswagen, whose ID.3 launched in the same year and rapidly attracted fleet and private buyers, and Tesla, which held significant share of the premium battery-electric segment in Europe. Where Volkswagen positioned the ID.3 on technology and design modernity and Tesla leaned into performance and software innovation, Renault's Electric Village strategy claimed a different register entirely: communal practicality and French rural authenticity. According to publicisgroupe.com, the creative relationship between Renault and Publicis dates to 1963, a lineage of approximately 57 years by the time this campaign was produced — a partnership depth that plausibly enabled the kind of structurally unconventional, long-duration campaign mechanics the Electric Village required.
Production credits for '100% electric vehicles town' are publicly documented. The campaign was created at Publicis Conseil, Paris, with Marco Venturelli overseeing creativity as president, and Marcelo Vergara serving as executive creative director, as listed by adstasher.com. Copywriting responsibilities were shared by Guillaume Sabbagh and Corentin Salignat, with art direction credited to Corentin Salignat, Guillaume Sabbagh, and Marine Badel. Account direction was led by Guillaume Foskolos, with account management handled by Gaëlle Morvan, Laurent Enet, and Margot Zandonella. Strategic planning was led by Didier Tavares.
The creative execution commits to a single media asset — a content film — which positions the work as a focused editorial statement rather than a multi-format advertising campaign. This formal restraint reflects the underlying creative logic: the story of eleven households in Appy converting to electric vehicles entirely is sufficiently concrete and unusual that it does not require amplification through multiple executional layers. The campaign crafted in French maintains an observational, documentary register consistent with its real-world subject matter, allowing the village and its residents to carry evidential weight that no product demonstration reel could replicate.
The decision to frame sustainable mobility through a rural French community rather than a metropolitan smart city environment is a deliberate creative choice that works against the visual conventions of the automotive industry's EV advertising. Where most clean transportation campaigns of the period favoured sleek urban infrastructure and design-forward imagery, the Electric Village aesthetic draws from a slower, more textured tradition of French documentary filmmaking. For Renault, a brand whose identity is inseparable from French industrial culture, the geographical and tonal specificity of Appy reinforces authenticity in ways that a generic futurist execution would undermine. The single-asset format also concentrates audience engagement, channelling viewers toward a sustained narrative rather than fragmenting attention across platform-optimised variants.
Renault's '100% electric vehicles town' campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 56 out of 100. No verified performance data connecting the campaign to sales lift, brand-tracking movement, awareness change, or return on investment is publicly available. No verified awards recognition has been identified at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, D&AD, The One Show, Clio Awards, Webby Awards, or WARC Awards as of the time of writing.
Archive engagement recorded by Clapboard shows 2,781 views, two likes, and zero comments on the campaign's archive page. These figures reflect the modest organic footprint typical of content-format automotive campaigns that are not supported by paid media amplification at scale. The campaign's structural effectiveness, however, warrants analysis independent of those metrics. The Electric Village mechanic — a multi-year, real-household experiment — generates an inherently durable content asset. Unlike a broadcast spot with a defined media window, a three-year community commitment creates ongoing newsworthy moments: seasonal usage reports, resident testimony, infrastructure observations. This architecture gives Renault and Publicis Conseil a renewable source of earned media across the life of the experiment, extending campaign value well beyond the September 2020 publication date.
In the context of the French EV market, where according to the International Energy Agency, Europe recorded approximately 1.4 million new electric-car registrations in 2020, campaigns that provide tangible proof of real-world EV viability carry strategic value beyond direct response. The Electric Village positions Renault not merely as an EV seller but as an active participant in France's clean transportation transition — a distinction that compounds over time as the brand's commitment to the Appy community remains publicly verifiable.
Renault's '100% electric vehicles town' is a content campaign produced by Publicis Conseil and published in France in September 2020. It documented a real-world experiment in which Renault supplied every household in Appy, Ariège with a New ZOE electric vehicle, home-charging equipment, and public charging access for a planned three-year period.
Renault selected Appy, a rural commune in Ariège, southern France, for the Electric Village experiment. The choice of a mountainous, rural location — rather than an urban centre — was a deliberate strategic decision designed to address consumer scepticism about electric vehicle practicality outside cities, strengthening the campaign's credibility as a proof of sustainable mobility.
Publicis Conseil, Paris created the campaign. Marco Venturelli oversaw creativity as president, Marcelo Vergara served as executive creative director, and Guillaume Sabbagh and Corentin Salignat shared copywriting duties, as documented by adstasher.com. The creative relationship between Renault and Publicis dates to 1963, according to publicisgroupe.com.
No verified performance data for sales lift, awareness change, or return on investment is publicly available for the campaign. Archive figures recorded by Clapboard show 2,781 views and two likes. The campaign earned no documented awards recognition at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, D&AD, or Clio Awards. The campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 56 out of 100.
Renault's Electric Village took a documentary, rural-community approach that contrasted directly with Volkswagen's technology-forward ID.3 launch and Tesla's performance-led positioning in the European market in 2020. Where competitors favoured design modernity, Renault claimed communal practicality and French rural authenticity as its distinctive territory for communicating clean transportation leadership.
Renault and Publicis Conseil structured the campaign around one content film, reflecting a creative decision to concentrate audience attention on a sustained documentary narrative rather than fragment engagement across multiple formats. The real-world experiment at Appy provided sufficient editorial substance to sustain a single-asset approach, and the multi-year commitment created an ongoing source of verifiable, newsworthy content.
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