Renault Kadjar Escape To Real Puts a Virtual Ambassador Behind the Wheel
Renault's Escape To Real is a 2019 French automotive film campaign created by Publicis Conseil that places a virtual ambassador named Liv inside a Kadjar SUV, using her journey from digital detachment to genuine emotion to argue that real-world driving cannot be replicated by any virtual experience.
The campaign launched in France on 12 January 2019, with wider publication following in February 2019, according to Clapboard's editorial archive. Produced as a film medium campaign comprising two media assets, Escape To Real aired across French and Swiss television as well as international TV markets, with OMD Switzerland handling the media agency responsibilities for the Swiss adaptation, as documented by Horizont.net. The geographic centre of gravity is unmistakably France, where Renault holds deep cultural resonance as a domestic automotive marque, and where the Kadjar SUV competes directly for the attention of drivers drawn toward connected and digital lifestyles.
The creative premise inverts the conventional automotive testimonial. Rather than recruiting a human celebrity to endorse the Kadjar, Publicis Conseil conceived Liv as a digital being who begins the campaign entirely without emotion — a deliberate symbol of a generation immersed in virtual experience. The Kadjar then becomes the instrument of her awakening. This inversion, catalogued by Ads of the World, positions the vehicle not merely as transportation but as the antidote to screen-mediated detachment. The campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100, reflecting a concept that is genuinely differentiated but constrained by the brevity and polish typical of broadcast automotive film.
Renault identified a specific cultural tension in the French automotive market to anchor the Kadjar's 2019 positioning. The tension is straightforward: as digital immersion deepens, the felt experience of physical space, motion, and landscape becomes rarer and therefore more valuable. Publicis Conseil built the entire Escape To Real strategy on the premise that the Kadjar SUV resolves that tension, delivering sensory reality to people whose daily lives are increasingly mediated by screens and virtual environments, as reported by Adruby.
The market context sharpened the strategic urgency. According to Media Renaultgroup, Groupe Renault sold approximately 3.8 million vehicles in 2019, a decline of 3.4 percent from the prior year, while Renault-brand passenger-car sales fell approximately 8.4 percent to around 1.945 million units. The global automotive market itself contracted by 4.8 percent in 2019, per media.renaultgroup.com, making differentiated brand communication more critical than ever in a softening sales environment. Against that backdrop, a campaign that leads with feeling rather than specification makes deliberate strategic sense.
In the compact SUV segment where the Kadjar competes, rivals including Volkswagen Tiguan and Peugeot 3008 — the latter a consistent segment leader in France — were investing heavily in rational product claims and technology narratives. Publicis Conseil's decision to cede the specification battleground entirely, instead fighting on emotional territory through the figure of Liv, was a calculated departure. The Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi Alliance held 10.9 percent of global vehicle sales in 2019, down from 11.3 percent in 2018, according to focus2move.com, while Toyota Group reached 11.4 percent global market share in the same period, per focus2move.com. Within that competitive landscape, brand emotion became a lever the Renault campaign could pull where volume alone could not.
Film director Andreas Grassl helmed the Escape To Real production, which was executed by production companies Improductibles and Busterwood, as documented by Adruby and Adsoftheworld.com. The creative leadership at Publicis Conseil comprised Marcelo Vergara as executive creative officer, Natalia Huidobro as copywriter, and Cecilia Astengo and Olivier Verdy as art directors, according to Adruby.
Grassl's directorial task was structurally delicate. The film had to render Liv visually credible as a digital entity — sufficiently otherworldly to signal her non-human origin — while simultaneously making her emotional transformation feel earned and human. The two states, virtual detachment and physical awakening, needed to be visually distinct without resorting to heavy-handed CGI transitions that might overwhelm the vehicle itself. Automotive advertising in France operates within a tradition of elegant, landscape-driven cinematography, and Escape To Real works within that tradition even as it imports science-fiction character logic into it.
The casting and visual design of Liv placed the campaign in productive dialogue with broader trends in synthetic and virtual identity that were gaining cultural traction in 2019. Rather than mimicking the hyperreal CGI avatars that technology brands had begun deploying, Publicis Conseil and Grassl opted for a more restrained aesthetic — a performer rendered with subtle digital markers rather than full photorealism — keeping the Kadjar and the French landscape at the centre of the frame. The two media assets comprising the campaign, as archived by Clapboard, suggest a concise execution designed for broadcast efficiency rather than extended storytelling, which aligns with the premium-placement television strategy documented across France, Switzerland, and international markets.
No verified performance data for Escape To Real is publicly available. The campaign does not appear in the award records of Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, or the Webby Awards, according to Clapboard's own awards index and corroborated by Adsoftheworld.com. The absence of formal recognition does not diminish the campaign's structural intelligence, but it does limit the evidentiary basis for assessing market impact.
What the campaign's architecture reveals is a brand willing to absorb short-term risk in pursuit of a longer emotional positioning. Escape To Real makes no product claims about the Kadjar's engine, safety ratings, or interior technology — a notable omission in a segment where competitors routinely foreground specification. The bet, implicit in Publicis Conseil's creative approach, is that audiences in France who are oversaturated with feature-led automotive advertising will respond more durably to a campaign that mirrors their own ambivalence about digital immersion. Whether that bet converted into Kadjar sales cannot be confirmed without access to Renault's internal data. The Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its concept with craft and distinctiveness, tempered by the limitations inherent in a two-asset broadcast execution that leaves little room to deepen the Liv character or the philosophical argument she embodies.
Escape To Real is a 2019 Renault Kadjar campaign created by Publicis Conseil in France. It follows Liv, a virtual ambassador who discovers genuine emotion while driving the Kadjar SUV, positioning real-world driving as the antidote to digital immersion. The film aired from 12 January 2019 across French and international television.
Publicis Conseil created Escape To Real for Renault in France. Executive creative officer Marcelo Vergara led the team, with copywriter Natalia Huidobro and art directors Cecilia Astengo and Olivier Verdy. Film director Andreas Grassl directed the production through Improductibles and Busterwood, according to Adruby and Adsoftheworld.com.
Liv is a virtual ambassador — a digital being — conceived by Publicis Conseil for the Escape To Real campaign. She begins emotionless and discovers real feeling through driving the Renault Kadjar, inverting the conventional automotive testimonial by replacing a human celebrity with a synthetic character, as documented by Adsoftheworld.com.
Renault aired Escape To Real primarily in France, where the campaign originated, and in Switzerland, with OMD Switzerland serving as media agency for the Swiss adaptation, according to Horizont.net. The campaign also reached international television markets, with a commercial broadcast start date of 12 January 2019, per Clapboard's editorial archive.
Escape To Real did not win awards at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, or the Webby Awards, according to Clapboard's awards index and Adsoftheworld.com. The campaign receives a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100, reflecting strong conceptual differentiation within the constraints of a broadcast film format.
Escape To Real abandons specification-led messaging entirely, competing on emotional territory against French-market rivals including the Peugeot 3008. Publicis Conseil's strategy targets drivers immersed in digital life, framing the Kadjar as the vehicle that delivers irreplaceable physical sensation — a positioning designed to stand apart from technology-focused competitor campaigns running in France in 2019.
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