With these many mythical models, Citroën has written the history of the automobile on several occasions, but if the brand has played on the audacity of its vehicles, it has also been audacious in its advertising. Initiated by André Citroën himself, this different communication manifested itself in the illumination of the Eiffel Tower or the Citroën inscription in the sky, but throughout its history, the brand has played a different role in its advertising. .
Citroën's advertising campaigns have always been bold and light-hearted, right up to the present day, when the brand poked fun at AMI with great success. One of the most significant periods of highly creative advertising took place between the 1960s and 1980s, when Citroën promoted the attributes of the iconic 2CV in the most exotic of ways.
Everything was allowed: comparing it to a luxury car, praising its simplicity or even juxtaposing it with a... camel! After all, the absence of certain elements, which were a problem for other cars, was one of the reasons for the 2CV's robustness, which won over millions of consumers all over the world. Even its performance was not a drawback: like a tortoise, it could be slower than a more expensive model, but it always reached its destination and was uniquely accessible.
And for those who think that the price of fuel is a current problem, in the 1960s Citroën emphasised the fact that the model did more with less. "The 2CV can make you smile because it's fun to own, because it's different - and because it saves money," the brand said in its adverts.
At the end of the 1980s, as the cars launched became more and more modern, Citroën, which already had several technological advantages in its range, preferred to emphasise the innovation of the 2CV with the colours of the bodywork.
These advertisements for the 2CV were the fruit of the brand's love of audacity and led Citroën to launch major campaigns in the 1980s that have now become legendary. The Visa GTI TV commercial showed the car being launched from an aircraft carrier and landing on a submarine. In another, the Citroën AX descended the Great Wall of China to show its revolutionary side. In 1995, the Xantia was the star of a remarkable campaign with the athlete Carl Lewis, and in 1999, a pyramid formed by 10 units of the model showed all the stability of the vehicle in curves.
