Solar Impulse's Prêt à Voter campaign by Publicis Conseil, Paris, sent 50 ready-to-vote environmental laws to all 577 French MPs, winning a 2024 Clio Grand
ARCHIVEHow Solar Impulse Made Climate Law the Most Targeted Ad Campaign in France
Solar Impulse's Prêt à Voter campaign is a 2022 public service initiative by the Solar Impulse Foundation, created by Publicis Conseil in Paris, that converted 1,400 practical environmental solutions into 50 pre-drafted legislative proposals and delivered them directly to all 577 newly elected members of France's National Assembly.
The campaign launches from a precise diagnosis. The Solar Impulse Foundation, chaired by explorer and pioneer Bertrand Piccard, positions itself around what it calls eco-realism: the conviction that pragmatic, economically viable solutions to environmental challenges already exist but remain locked out of public policy because the debate is dominated by alarm rather than action. In France, as across the broader European policy landscape, the loudest voices on climate change are those raising the emergency; the calm voice proposing workable answers is routinely drowned out. Prêt à Voter — French for ready-to-vote — is built to solve that structural problem, not merely comment on it.
The mechanism is deliberately literal. Over two months, legal and scientific experts working with Publicis Conseil transformed a curated selection of the foundation's ideas into formally drafted legislation. A limited-edition book containing all 50 proposals was then printed and sent to every deputy in the National Assembly, accompanied by a personal letter from Bertrand Piccard. The campaign launched on July 5, 2022, timed to coincide with the seating of France's newly elected parliament, as documented by lareclame.fr and adsoftheworld.com. The audience was, by design, precisely 577 people — making it, as Publicis Conseil described it, perhaps the most targeted business-to-business campaign in advertising history. Clapboard scores this work 86 out of 100.
ARCHIVEPublicis Conseil's strategic insight is ruthlessly simple. Awareness campaigns about climate change laws already saturate the French media environment; what is absent is a mechanism that removes the friction between knowledge and legislative action. Rather than adding another voice to the public debate, the agency identifies and eliminates one specific barrier: the time and technical complexity required for a newly elected MP to translate an environmental idea into a debatable parliamentary text.
The strategic context in France makes this choice sharper. According to Kantar Media, France's total advertiser communications market invested approximately 34.1 billion euros in 2023, up 3.7 percent from the previous year, yet the vast majority of that investment targets consumers rather than policymakers. The Solar Impulse Foundation operates in public-interest environmental advocacy, a space where conventional reach metrics are essentially irrelevant. In this context, Publicis Conseil's head of planning strategy Alastair Maclean and the creative team identify parliament itself as the only audience that matters for producing real change in environmental legislation.
The competitive landscape illuminates the strategic originality further. Organisations such as Greenpeace France pursue public mobilisation and legal challenges to drive climate policy, while broader institutional campaigns funded by the French government rely on mass-media education. Solar Impulse, by contrast, enters the legislative chamber directly. The foundation's eco-realism positioning — curating only ideas that are both environmentally sound and economically viable — differentiates it from advocacy organisations that prioritise urgency over implementation. By pre-drafting legislation, Prêt à Voter removes the most common excuse available to parliamentarians: that they lack the technical resources to act. The French digital out-of-home market, estimated at approximately 387.6 million dollars in 2023 with roughly 6 percent annual growth according to industry estimates, provided a supplementary channel, with out-of-home and digital out-of-home placements near the National Assembly and high-traffic Paris locations reinforcing the campaign's direct mail activation, as reported by warc.com.
The creative execution of Prêt à Voter is structured around an object, not a message. Art directors Steven Daout and Rick Andersen, working under chief executive officer and chief creative officer Marco Venturelli at Publicis Conseil, Paris, centre the entire campaign on a limited-edition physical book — the printed anthology of 50 ready-to-vote legislative proposals derived from the Solar Impulse Foundation's library of approximately 1,400 curated environmental ideas.
The book is the medium and the argument simultaneously. Graphic designer Pierrick Lamoureux gives the volume the visual authority of an official parliamentary document rather than a piece of advocacy marketing, reinforcing the campaign's core premise that these are not aspirational ideas but actionable law. Head of art Maud Robaglia oversees the art direction that ensures the object commands the attention of a newly seated deputy sorting through their parliamentary correspondence. Production was handled by The Juice by Prodigious, Paris, with media placement coordinated by Publicis Media Connect, Paris, as documented by publicisconseil.fr and adsoftheworld.com.
The out-of-home and digital out-of-home layer extends the campaign's presence across Paris, with placements concentrated near the National Assembly in the 7th arrondissement. Television interviews featuring Bertrand Piccard amplify the foundation's eco-realism message to broader French audiences, reinforcing the authority of the book arriving on each deputy's desk. Project manager Emmanuelle Monset coordinates the logistics of distributing all 577 personalised copies within the launch window of July 5, 2022, as noted by lareclame.fr. The campaign's copywriting is intentionally precise and restrained — the most targeted in its category — because its audience of 577 readers requires legislative credibility, not consumer persuasion. Director of corporate communication Michèle Piccard and Solar Impulse chairman Bertrand Piccard personally sign the accompanying letter, lending the package the weight of direct institutional dialogue rather than advertising.
Solar Impulse's Prêt à Voter campaign produces verified legislative outcomes. According to WARC, 45 of the 50 pre-drafted proposals were debated in France's parliament, three proposals passed into law, and three proposals were integrated into a renewable-energy bill, with nine further proposals debated in the Senate. WARC also records more than 13 million impressions generated across the campaign's media activity.
These results reframe the standard metrics of advertising effectiveness. In a public service campaign whose sole objective is legislative change, a debate rate of 45 out of 50 proposals represents near-total penetration of the target audience. The conversion of three proposals into enacted law and the integration of a further three into a renewable-energy bill demonstrates that Prêt à Voter achieves outcomes that most climate change communication campaigns cannot claim: direct, traceable influence on French environmental legislation.
The awards record confirms industry recognition of this effectiveness. The campaign wins a Grand Prix at the 2024 Clio Awards, as documented by The One Club. The Drum ranks Solar Impulse's Prêt à Voter joint fifth among the most awarded technology-sector campaigns, as reported by The Drum on March 6, 2026. The campaign was documented and awarded across 2023 and 2024, with WARC records updated in March and June 2026 confirming the legislative metrics cited above. Clapboard awards the campaign a score of 86 out of 100, reflecting the structural rigour of the strategy, the precision of the execution, and the rarity of a public service campaign that can point to passed legislation as its primary result.
Prêt à Voter is a 2022 public service campaign by the Solar Impulse Foundation, created by Publicis Conseil in Paris. It converted 1,400 environmental ideas into 50 pre-drafted legislative proposals and delivered them to all 577 newly elected members of France's National Assembly, enabling deputies to debate and enact environmental legislation directly.
Publicis Conseil, Paris, created the campaign for the Solar Impulse Foundation. The core team included chief creative officer Marco Venturelli, art directors Steven Daout and Rick Andersen, head of art Maud Robaglia, and head of planning strategy Alastair Maclean, as credited by publicisconseil.fr and adsoftheworld.com.
According to WARC, 45 of the 50 pre-drafted proposals were debated in France's parliament. Three proposals passed into law, three were integrated into a renewable-energy bill, and nine more were debated in the Senate. The campaign also generated more than 13 million impressions across its media placements in Paris and nationally.
Solar Impulse's Prêt à Voter won a Grand Prix at the 2024 Clio Awards, as documented by oneclub.org. The Drum also ranked it joint fifth among the most awarded technology-sector campaigns. Clapboard awards the campaign a score of 86 out of 100 for strategic rigour and verified legislative impact.
Bertrand Piccard is the founder and chairman of the Solar Impulse Foundation. He personally signed the letter accompanying each of the 577 ready-to-vote books sent to French deputies, lending the campaign direct institutional authority. His television interviews also amplified Solar Impulse's eco-realism message to broader French audiences during the campaign period.
Unlike public awareness campaigns by organisations such as Greenpeace France, Prêt à Voter targets only the 577 members of France's National Assembly. Rather than raising public alarm about environmental challenges, it delivers pre-drafted legislation that removes the technical and time barriers preventing parliamentarians from acting on existing climate solutions.
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