Flashback to the summer of 1999: a certain José Bové blocked the construction of a new McDonald’s in Aveyron and laid the foundations for a “French-style” anti-globalization fight. 20 years later, the fast food chain seems to have shaken off its degraded image by multiplying agreements with local farmers and launching specific products to seduce the French, such as the McBaguette.
According to Bloomberg, it’s now e-commerce giant Amazon’s turn to borrow the same strategy with a vast scheme called… “Ratatouille.” a direct look to the Disney animated film of the same namereleased in 2007 and set in Paris.
A project to convince the French
The “Ratatouille” communication plan includes advertisements broadcast on television but also studies to demonstrate the positive economic impact of Amazon’s activities. A study by Roland Berger commissioned by Amazon last March, for example, made it possible to survey local merchants around Metz for whom the establishment of an Amazon warehouse nearby would have had a neutral impact on their activity (84 % from them). Another survey, this time requested from Ifop, indicated that 8 out of 10 Amazon employees would recommend working there.
“For more than twenty years, we have strived to earn the trust of our customers in France by giving back to their communities, providing quality service and offering a wide choice at low prices, even as the cost of living has declined.” an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg. “Like many companies, we have always strived to share information about how we support the communities in which we operate.”
Last March, Amazon even got its own booth for the first time at the Paris Agricultural Show, to promote French food producers. The objective is obviously to show their involvement and reinforce the support of French consumers who show a more marked mistrust than in other European countries. The “Ratatouille” project, imagined 3 years ago, would aim to “Frenchify” Amazon, if we use the terms of an anonymous source interviewed by Bloomberg.
A rather mixed picture in France
We cannot say that Amazon is blacklisted for all this: at least 1 in 3 French people buy through the platform (almost 22 million people), which allows the giant to capture 19% of the e-commerce market. . But since its launch in France in 2000, controversies also regularly arise in the debate.
During the first lockdown, the Seattle company was, for example, accused of poorly protecting the health of its employees in France (today there are 200,000) and decided to suspend its activities for 5 weeks. During the second confinement, the discourse that denounced Amazon’s contribution to the disappearance of local commerce also resumed with renewed vigor. Left-wing elected officials and environmentalists launched two petitions in the winter of 2020 to convince the French to spend a “Christmas without the Amazon.”
More recently, the Culture and Economy Ministries also imposed a 3-euro tax on book deliveries in France to better protect the giant’s bookstores. But at the same time, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was also awarded the Legion of Honor by Emmanuel Macron last February. Therefore, the e-commerce giant seems to have more than one trick up its sleeve…
Source: BFM TV
