Olympian Customer Service at the Heart of Accor’s Ad

As the world’s eyes are on Paris for the conclusion of the 2024 Olympic Games, what better time to check out what French sponsor Accor have done for their ad, one of the most effective we’ve seen from the Games’ home country.

Accor are a masterbrand under whose umbrella are hotel chains well known to any traveller in Europe, like Ibis, Mercure and Movenpick. As Europe’s biggest hospitality chain they’ve played a crucial role in helping these Games run smoothly for millions of extra visitors to Paris, and they’re an official partner too.

But this ad takes a rather subtle approach to the Games. Rather than directly showcase Accor’s record of providing hospitality at an Olympic scale, it focuses on the individual experience of the brand and how its staff will go out of their way to help any customer. But it does this with a witty, highly visual ad which also celebrates the feats of athleticism we’ve seen in these Olympics – and the way in which the Games have been so well integrated into the city of Paris as a whole.

The ad shows a family checking out of their Accor hotel but as they get into their taxi, one of the children drops her ice cream cone. Disaster! Fortunately the concierge pops back in for a replacement, but by the time he comes out, the taxi has gone. There follows a madcap chase through Paris as the concierge sprints and hurdles to catch the taxi and keep the ice cream level – his quest followed by an excited media. Finally he reaches the taxi and delivers the ice cream, but a request from the mother sends him off all over again…

The ad is well liked by viewers with a 4.3-Star rating, indicating strong potential for long-term grand growth given the right investment. It’s easy to see why people like the ad – it’s funny, dramatic, and celebrates the Olympics, Paris and Accor’s ideal of customer service at the same time.

There are two areas the ad does underperform in, though. First, a low Brand Fluency score also drags down the short-term Spike Rating. This is a risk masterbrand ads take – because individual brands like Ibis and Mercure are more familiar to the French public than Accor itself, the Accor brand probably needed to be stronger and more central to the ad sooner in order to avoid confusion. (Though if viewers identified the ad with sub-brands, that isn’t a huge concern).

There’s also a missed opportunity with the ending. While 4.3-Stars is an excellent score for the hospitality sector, when we look at the second by second trace we can see the high levels of positive emotion ebb away at the end. The final request by the Mum is meant as a joke, but after such astonishing efforts to deliver the ice cream it means the ad ends on a bit of an anti-climax. So the overall score for the ad is strong, but with a more positive ending, it might have been even stronger. It’s still a very good ad, but Accor just misses a gold-medal finish.