How Renault and Dacia Made Cars to Work a Force for Inclusive Mobility in France

Renault's Cars to Work Strategy Turns French Transport Inequality Into a Customer Acquisition Model

Renault identified a specific and underserved tension in the French automotive market. The CareMakers program had been active for twelve years yet remained largely unknown to the populations it was designed to serve, as well as to the broader French public. The 2018 gilets jaunes protests had placed mobility inequality at the centre of national political debate in France, establishing shared cultural context for a campaign built around the relationship between car access and economic participation.

The strategic insight driving Cars to Work is that the standard financing timeline is itself the barrier. Conventional vehicle leasing in France requires proof of income before a contract begins — a condition that structurally excludes new job starters, particularly those in trial periods in rural or peri-urban zones. By inverting the payment schedule so that financial obligation follows demonstrated employment security, Renault repositioned its product not as a consumer luxury but as infrastructure for labour market entry. This approach placed Renault in direct contrast with competitors such as Stellantis, whose brands including Citroën and Peugeot address the affordable vehicle segment in France through conventional financing structures, and Volkswagen Group, which dominates European volume but has not developed an equivalent social-access mechanism in the French market. According to Media Renaultgroup, Renault Group held approximately 25.8% market share in France in 2024, ranking it as the dominant domestic automotive brand, and recorded total sales of more than 541,000 vehicles in the country that year. That position of market leadership gave the Cars to Work model both the financial infrastructure and the institutional credibility to function at scale. The partnership with France Travail, the national employment agency, was particularly significant: it embedded Cars to Work inside an existing network of social prescribers rather than requiring Renault to build a new distribution channel from the ground up. According to contagious.com, the campaign attracted substantial industry attention precisely because it demonstrated that a commercial financing product could be engineered to function as a tool of social inclusion without requiring subsidy or charitable framing.

Publicis Conseil Builds the Cars to Work Creative Case Around Real Beneficiaries and Ambient Presence Across France

Publicis Conseil constructed the creative execution of Cars to Work around authenticity rather than aspiration. The campaign deployed ambient media across France to bring the program's existence into the physical environments where its target audience lives and moves — regional employment centres, transport hubs, and the social infrastructure of towns and cities underserved by transit networks. Rather than presenting an idealised vision of vehicle ownership, the creative work foregrounded the structural reality of transport poverty and allowed the product mechanics themselves — the deferred payment model, the no-penalty return option — to carry the persuasive weight.

The campaign reached 8.8 million people in France and generated 32 million online video impressions, including 17 million completed views, according to publicisconseil.fr. These figures indicate a media strategy that combined broad awareness delivery with high-attention formats capable of communicating a financing mechanism that required genuine explanation rather than simple brand recall. The use of ambient media was particularly well-suited to a campaign targeting people in transit or in employment-related contexts, placing the Cars to Work message at points of maximum relevance in the daily lives of job seekers across France.

Production credits for the Cars to Work campaign are attributed to Publicis Conseil, with Cléa Martinet, VP Sustainability at Renault Group, serving as a named spokesperson and advocate whose public statements framed the campaign's social rationale, as cited by media.renault.com. The creative approach also benefited from the institutional weight of the CareMakers program itself: twelve years of operational data, more than 3,000 beneficiaries assisted, and a network of established partner organisations gave the campaign a factual foundation that advertising alone cannot manufacture. According to Little Black Book, the campaign's creative case drew on evidence that 94% of CareMakers beneficiaries found or maintained employment, and that the program produced a measurable increase in permanent employment contracts among participants.

Cars to Work Earns Two Cannes Grand Prix Awards and Delivers 1,500 New Contracts in 2024

Cars to Work produced results that are verifiable at both the industry recognition level and the direct program delivery level. Renault won two Grand Prix awards at Cannes Lions 2024 — one in the Creative Commerce, Customer Acquisition and Retention category and one in the Sustainable Development Goals, Decent Work and Economic Growth category — along with two Gold awards in Creative Business Transformation and two Silver awards across Brand Experience and Activation and Creative Strategy, according to reporting by lbbonline.com and bestmediainfo.com. The campaign additionally received the Direct Grand Prix at Eurobest 2024 and the Impact White Pencil at D&AD 2025, as reported by lbbonline.com.

At the program delivery level, Cars to Work generated 1,500 new leasing contracts in 2024, according to media.renault.com. This figure represents tangible commercial output from a campaign that was simultaneously being evaluated as a creative and social innovation. The broader CareMakers program, within which Cars to Work operates, has assisted more than 3,000 financially vulnerable individuals since 2012, according to Renault Group. According to publicisconseil.fr, the campaign reached 8.8 million people in France and produced 32 million online video impressions, with 17 million of those completed views — metrics that reflect both the scale of media investment and the audience's willingness to engage with content that explains a complex financial product.

No single campaign in the French automotive sector in 2024 matched Cars to Work's combination of commercial mechanism design and creative industry recognition. The structural effectiveness of the model — a self-liquidating risk transfer that removes the primary barrier to vehicle access for new employees — means its impact extends beyond the award cycle into an operational program that continues to generate contracts and employment outcomes across France.