Fnac is the iconic cultural retailer in France, fighting for culture’s openness since 1954.

By being a store where culture was lived and not just consumed, Fnac occupied an important place in French minds and hearts.

But Fnac has undergone the massive disruption of the culture, the same one that has empowered platforms while killing so many traditional players: dematerialization. The brand was loosing its relevance and progressively its connexion with French people. Even internal voices among the company started to think that it was maybe the time to say goodbye to their cultural DNA.

It was time to fight back and we seize the opportunity to revamp the brand platform to do it.

We needed to assert our cultural positioning by finding a way to reignite what has always made the value of fnac: its commitment towards cultural openness. And doing this with a clear challenge in mind: building a value proposition that gives an essential role to Fnac in this new era led by platforms.

Fortunately, it appears that this era comes up with a big issue that can be at the heart of our needed fight: recommendation algorithms. The invisible machine power of platforms. The ones that influence everything we like, talk about, buy, read, or watch. The ones that guide us into bubbles where we see only a part of what the world really is, which empowers dangerous mindsets and behaviours such as addiction, polarization, radicalization… The ones that make us experiencing a culture where everything looks the same, where nothing surprises us, where nothing shakes us, where nothing makes us see the world a bit differently.

For Fnac, the fight was here. We revamped the brand platform and set a new brand tagline: “Free the culture”. A fight to empower the plurality and richness of culture, but above all a fight for freeing people from their bubbles and give them back the beauty of serendipity.

Then, we needed to act bold. Not just a one-shot, because this fight needs to live through a long-lasting journey. So, we have built the communication plateform called “Unrecommended by the algorithm”. From display, to Twitter, Spotify or OOH, we spread our commitment: going beyond what people are supposed to like to open them to what they are not, in order to free the culture and expand people’s cultural horizons.

And the results were there. Oustanding results for the advertising campaign, strong engagement with our display activation and last but not least, for the first time of its history, Fnac has been ranked 2nd most preferred brand for French people.