What town doesn’t have its own bouillon (traditional and simple French restaurant)? And never mind if it bears no historical truth. Sometimes a bouillon grows on a suburban car park, sometimes its surface area is no bigger than that of a traditional restaurant, but it doesn’t matter, because a bouillon is, first and foremost, a world of imagination.

A good-natured and generous world, made up of home-cooked dishes (those you recognise because you have eaten them at home) and a warm atmosphere in large rooms where the tables are close together. All at affordable prices, that take any worries out of the equation. Very important. Egg mayo, sausages and mash, crème caramel: the winning combo. To think that twenty years ago, molecular cuisine was on everyone’s lips.

The word bistro, overused by restaurant chains in search of authenticity, is now only a subject of fantasy for Americans, who still think of St Germain des Prés as the home of jazz and literature. Wine bars, once at the forefront, have now lost their previous popularity for being too elitist. Steakhouses have bowed out, and the last remaining Flunch restaurants are trying to reinvent themselves to delay their demise. Recently, it was the food trucks and then the food courts that were in the spotlight, but it seems that the tide is turning. How many of them have been called to the rescue to reenchant shopping centres on the brink of extinction? The promise of experience and conviviality was not always there, even though it has become the main expectation of consumers. Now is the time for bouillons.

Here, just like at McDonald’s, people come as they are. Families, young couples, grannies, managers, blue collar workers, shopkeepers – the whole world comes here. Le bouillon is a triumph of diversity and intergenerational appeal, the two most powerful engines in marketing today. Three generations around the same table and the fantasy of reunited families becomes a reality.

Le bouillon is also about organisation and effervescent efficiency, because here, whether in the dining room or in the kitchen, everything is streamlined, calculated, planned, calibrated and timed, without ever losing its promised ambience. Because the bouillon is not just a form of catering, it’s first and foremost a show. And as with all shows, everything that goes on behind the scenes must remain invisible and should serve to enhance the customer’s experience. A lesson for many retailers.

Well-known to ethnologists (and Serge Gainsbourg fans), the ‘Cargo cult’ describes the tricks and rituals that the inhabitants of Papua (a million inhabitants ignored by the world until 1930, when they were discovered by two Australian explorers on a quest for gold) devised to attract to themselves the riches of the explorers who landed there and whose language and customs they did not understand.

What kind of God could provide so many marvellous things – clothes, food, tools, medicines – they wondered. Docks were built and airstrips crudely cleared in the hope that ships and planes would unload the coveted goods. Control towers were built out of bamboo, planes were made out of straw, and dummy walkie-talkies were cobbled together because soldiers had been seen using them to control the arrival of the cargo… but the expected largesse never arrived…

It is hard not to think of those Papuans when we look at the retail trade and restaurants in town centres today. Like them, shops are doing everything they can to appeal to us. Some clothing shops set up a table and two chairs in front of their windows, while others put out an olive tree, an oleander, a green plant or rounded boxtrees, small pieces of furniture loaded with cushions and knick-knacks on sale, and sometimes a kakemono. Those most keen to attract attention will even go so far as to set up a deckchair or an ‘Emmanuelle’ armchair on the pavement as an invitation to have their photo taken. Self-service flower shops broadcast recorded birdsong to surprise us and, since the health crisis, giant teddy bears have taken up residence in restaurant windows. Menus are no longer displayed, but laid out on a table on the pavement, ‘guinguette’-style lights adorn their terraces and highly questionable plastic flowers hang from their façades.

The aim is always the same: to attract attention. Children, onlookers, tourists whose compasses are called Instagram or Tiktok, to encourage them to take photos, like, follow and leave comments. The new manna. The new fuel for the economy. Born on screens, the attention economy has ended up on our pavements and is now spreading to commerce.

Not everything that makes it past the media wall is very profound or exciting, but it often reveals ‘something’ about the zeitgeist. The question is what. An emerging aspiration, a suspended expectation, a new imagination in the making. No one should remain indifferent. Especially not brands that consider the lifestyles and expectations of their consumers to be more strategic than the actions of their competitors. Which brand wouldn’t dream of taking the place of Inoxtag and becoming an Inoxbrand with the power that fascinates so many?

All brands have an Everest to conquer, an Everest which, in the case of Inoxtag, is simply a pretext chosen for its ability to produce dreams and embody the idea of a challenge. An advertising concept. Inoxtag is not a Commandant Cousteau 2.0 and environmental concerns are not his own, because the essential thing here is to showcase performance as a condition of power. This is where the Inoxtag mechanism can be of interest to brands.

To achieve Inoxbrand status, a brand needs three things. A powerful community, ready to relay its every move and mobilise to achieve the Spectacular, which millions of views and expected connection crashes will confirm. A universal message conceived as an inspiring and easily appropriated philosophy of life, consisting essentially of a reminder of the importance of believing in one’s dreams and always striving to surpass one’s limits in order to become an improved version of oneself. And a spontaneous, positive relational tone to build up an effective feeling of closeness with the target, capable of numbing any attempt at critical thinking.

A hyper-active community, a role model and empathetic relationships: many brands (Apple, Tesla, Nike, Jacquemus, Balenciaga…) could fit into this category, but are they really Inoxbrands? To be Inoxbrands, they also have to succeed in the tricky business of getting people talking about them without showing their faces. Inoxtag’s performance is due in no small part to the five months of radio silence he maintained after announcing his project. Five months to build pressure and expectations.

It’s a way of remembering that disappearance can be the source of desire in our world of immediacy and showmanship. Which brand would dare?

This summer saw the opening of the Musée Vivant du Fromage on the Ile Saint-Louis in Paris, an interactive educational space designed to introduce visitors to France’s cheese heritage and regions through their producers. The museum also offers courses, workshops, events and even a real dairy, with the aim of promoting cheese-making expertise and inspiring people to take up cheese-making careers. A traditional creamery and cheese shop rounds off the tour, of course, so that no-one leaves empty-handed…

At the same time, 140 years after its creation, the legendary Saint Germain des Prés café, Les Deux Magots, was opening a new chapter in its history with its Comptoir Les Deux Magots offering fast food, savoury and sweet, to take away or eat in, made with homemade recipes and local products that ‘promote French know-how and traditional expertise’. It’s sure to appeal to lovers of coffee breaks, lunches and snacks, as well as teleworkers… Located on rue de Buci (its birthplace before migrating to place Saint-Germain-des-Prés), the establishment also makes a few books available to its customers and invites them to write a postcard, which it will then send to France or anywhere in the world… Clever and fitting, given the literary origins of the area.

On the right bank, Fauchon, another Parisian icon, has set up shop in the Carrousel du Louvre, offering exclusive Mona Lisa éclairs and a selection of gourmet products celebrating the best of made in France: macarons, chocolates, confectionery, biscuits, jams and teas, including the emblematic Un après-midi à Paris and Un soir de France. Perfect souvenirs.

A cultural immersion, a re-enchanted moment and a range of exclusive products: three consumer experiences that each illustrate the way in which the environment can contribute to the creativity of the offer. Bringing a place or a story to life is just as much expected by consumers in search of surprise as it is by brands and markets keen to regenerate their image and establish themselves on social media.

This summer also saw the demise of Hédiard on Place de la Madeleine. The store, which had long contributed to the reputation of the French delicatessen, had remained stuck in a fixed distribution model. Breathing life into it could have meant keeping it alive.

We discovered the phenomenon on social media, where it was called ‘Dupes’ and consisted of Gen Z buying (and letting others know about) quality copies of the products they dreamed of (perfumes, bags, accessories, sneakers) but couldn’t afford. The phenomenon seemed to be confined to the inhabitants of TikTok (a world of its own), but now we’re seeing it in real life, in a more adult version and in a country that everyone considers (considered?) to be an Eldorado: China. Not so trifling anymore.

The phenomenon goes by the name of Pingti (‘dupe’ in Chinese) and describes the same penchant for bypassing brands through imitations of equivalent quality, without logos. This is unlikely to help the business of luxury groups who are already having to contend (for the first time) with the slowdown in the Chinese market. Times are changing there too, and showing off logos seems to be less and less popular with the upper classes.

In China, on Xiaohongshu, a platform that is a cross between Instagram and Pinterest and popular with young, affluent women, influencers teach users to dress like Japanese women, who are always elegant without spending a lot of money. Hairstyles, facials and details are more important to them than logos. Wearing a Versace dress with a Chanel handbag is now reserved for older rich women who have no real sense of fashion and are pejoratively nicknamed ‘da ma’. Is this trend, which is just one of the side-effects of globalisation given that European fashion remains an outward sign of wealth, really so surprising?

Is it any wonder that, with all the talk of ‘expert consumers’ who know more and more, they have come to exchange tips that can hack the system? Furthermore, haven’t a good number of start-ups been built on the idea of cutting out the middleman to offer quality and affordable prices to their customers?

More fundamentally, this phenomenon reveals the desire of consumers to get closer to those who produce, and thus cut out the middlemen. Another way of defining value for money… Retail chains were the first to be held responsible for inflation, but now it’s the turn of the luxury groups. The quest for ‘small producers’ is no longer confined to the world of agriculture.

It is no secret that wherever Emily appears, in Paris or elsewhere, hordes of fans are quick to flock, upsetting the established balance. Now we learn that the phenomenon is not confined to the series designed to make Parisian life sexy. According to an IFOP survey commissioned by the CNC, one in four French people will visit a place on holiday that has been used as a set in a fiction, film or series. There was a time when a museum, a château, a goat’s cheese or olive oil factory were enough to justify a side trip…

A new windfall for areas that are constantly complaining about the disappearance of shops and economic activities. Entertainment is the new heritage. This phenomenon, dubbed cine-tourism, began at the turn of the century with Amélie Poulain, the effects of which are still being felt in Montmartre, and has continued ever since, from Étretat, with Arsène Lupin, to the Château d’If off the coast of Marseille, the ultimate cine-tourism destination spawned by the success of The Count of Monte Cristo. It is a pity that the authors of Un p’tit truc en plus (10 million spectators) didn’t have the idea of associating their script with a city that was also under-recognised, which would have benefited from an immediate and unexpected attraction. Limoges, Saint-Etienne or Clermont-Ferrand, for example… And cine- tourism is not just a French phenomenon, since Bridgeton, Harry Potter, The Crown and Game of Thrones have had the same effect in the UK…

What does this phenomenon tell us? For the most cynical, it is proof that boredom is indeed the most universally spread disease and that the only possible treatment for it is to constantly offer new reasons to move around. Movement is always good for the head. Others will emphasise the current desire of spectators to increase the emotional bond that unites them with a work of fiction by reliving and sharing some of its scenes ‘in real life’. It is as if we now have to ‘check out’ the real thing to better experience the emotions generated by fiction. It is as if fiction, which was originally far removed from reality, had ended up joining it, adding to its appeal.

It would be wrong to stigmatise the phenomenon, as it prevents entertainment from becoming nothing more than an addictive pastime devoid of meaning. Fiction in the service of reality, and reality in the service of fiction: a perfectly virtuous two-way street.

Any brand placed in a museum will experience an upward thrust in its status, equal to the weight of its shifting volume of followers. More than a shop on a high-profile street, the museum has virtues in the eyes of brands comparable to those of a Swiss clinic that promises eternal youth. After the retrospectives and other conceptual exhibitions devised by the luxury world to give its products an iconic status, the Olympic Games revealed that museums can also attract other sectors.

Air France took up residence at the Palais de Tokyo, a major cultural venue in Paris and, for the occasion, located close to the Olympic festivities. No mean feat… In an 850 sq. metre space, visitors could sample a gourmet menu designed by French chefs and served under the same conditions as on board long-distance flights (in Business class). Afterwards, they could curl up in the airline’s latest Business cabin, discover the red dress emblematic of its latest communication campaign, take a look at the shop selling exclusive items (why not be tempted by this pair of trainers made from Airbus A380 seat covers?) and take part in a promotional game with a free flight to be won.

A few Olympic strides away, Nike had set its sights on the Centre Pompidou. Its facade, transformed into a giant screen, showed the athletes it supported among the museum’s most striking works (a daring move!), while one of its rooms, the Mezzanine, was entirely dedicated to the glory of the Air Max, thus promoted to the rank of a work of art for its form as much as for its technology. It all makes sense, after all, their designer, Tinker Hatfield, drew his inspiration from the architecture of this very building by Renzo Piano. In the piazza, an arty skate park, designed by French artist Raphaël Zarka, completed the display, offering running, basketball, football and breakdance sessions.

The brutally modernist Palais de Tokyo for one, and the icon-breaking Centre Pompidou for the other, the locations chosen by these two brands were no accident. They underlined their ability to innovate through a presence that was deliberately a little disruptive (audacity as the fuel of creativity), while at the same time allowing them to display a form of cultural belonging induced by the works they were rubbing shoulders with for the occasion. Digital is not the only way to create unique brand experiences. There’s also art and culture.

This summer, not all luxury brands had set up their parasols on a private beach between Saint Tropez and Nice. Many of them were on call in Paris for the Olympic Games, and had to make do with the banks of the Seine. However, there was no question of them moving there in the event of a sudden improvement in the river’s swimmability – a more than hypothetical prospect – and thus no opening of a new, premium and unexpected chapter for Paris Plage. The brands of the LVMH group had bigger fish to fry. They were on a mission.

As well as taking care of the medals and their transport, and dressing the athletes during their various performances, their mission was to prepare for the emergence of a new market, dubbed ‘athluxury’, as the ultimate, upgraded form of ‘athleisure’, the success of which can already be measured on a daily basis (hoodies, T-shirts, sneakers as the new uniform). An offer combining athletic design and technical innovation with the expertise of a fashion house and the vocabulary of ultra-luxury – lots to keep up with.

The staging of the opening ceremony in the Vuitton workshops (close-ups of the gestures and the monogrammed canvas), followed by the evocation of the luxury hotel set up in place of the Samaritaine (close-ups of busy bellboys), was not just a premium advertising spot seen by the whole world at (very) prime time, but a new bridge established between the world of luxury and that of sport. A new Eldorado capable of rebooting the codes of luxury towards less showiness and, in the process, winning over all the stylish Millennials who see their bodies as instruments of performance and conquest.

LVMH’s other objective was to show us that a trunk, a dress or a hotel service have a cultural value comparable to that of Marie Antoinette, Edith Piaf, Cerrone or Aya Nakamura. Each represents a certain image of France on the international stage, embodying a unique savoir-faire, a historical heritage or a talent capable of making a lasting impression. It’s a far more effective way of legitimising luxury than an exhibition or a Foundation that only speaks to a small, reputedly elitist audience?

Regenerated by the multi-faceted appeal of sport (performance, innovation, technicality, design) and endowed with an increasingly assertive cultural capital, luxury has been rearmed for many years to come.

We will never cease to be amazed by the ability of social media to reenchant reality with new words and new aesthetic codes. No field is immune. And even less so those who have fallen off the radar of modernity, who now find the opportunity to return to it thanks to a sudden and unexpected craze. Herbalists can testify to this.

Up until now, we’d imagined them to be rather austere and of a respectable age, housed in shops whose appearance was an explicit reminder that they belonged to a very distant era. Wooden bookcases, porcelain pots and ceramic mortars and pestles were the hallmarks of their credibility. Now they’re back on the internet as “herbalist influencers”, sharing mouth-watering, Instagrammable recipes based on forgotten plants and distilling all kinds of advice for our own good. Enough to feed a flourishing business, an objective that is always on the minds of influencers…

The result? Plants have never received so much attention as they do today. All the brands involved in health, beauty and well-being (and there are a lot of them) have understood this. They are stepping up their research to identify THE plant with the exceptional virtues, still unknown to their competitors, that could boost their reputation. But this doesn’t explain everything.

The current success of “herbalist influencers” is also linked to the success of homemade products, driven both by a desire to control what we consume and by a desire to save money. “What I make is inevitably better than what the industry offers” and “my creativity is limitless” sound like new mantras. The millions of views generated by the Botox mask with linseed, presented as the new natural remedy for ageing, are proof of this. Just two ingredients, immediate traceability and high expectations: who could disagree?

Last but not least, those who present themselves as “herbalist influencers” also owe their success to the community that supports them, whose strength lies as much in the values shared by its members as in the sense of belonging that unites them. What is a community if not a successful hobby?

A few months ago, we wrote about the “dupe” phenomenon, which arose on TikTok as a result of Gen Z’s infatuation with copies – cheaper but not necessarily of poor quality – which, in the absence of “real products”, gave them access to the same sensations without having to sacrifice their savings. It’s a way for this generation to say that they are not fooled by the profits made by luxury groups on the back of their desires…

The phenomenon mainly concerned fashion accessories and perfumes, but also, to a lesser extent, the world of cosmetics. Now we are discovering dupes in the tourism sector. We can no longer talk about a phenomenon that only affects Gen Z… The duped destinations are less popular because they are less well known, and therefore less expensive. Liverpool rather than London, Taipei rather than Seoul, Curacao rather than Saint-Martin in the West Indies. But also destinations that are closer to home, and therefore better for the green conscience (a concern that is sometimes more important than the budget…) because you no longer need to take a plane to get there. The rocks of Kerlouan (Finistère) rather than the beaches of the Seychelles or the Tufs waterfall (Jura) comparable to those in Thailand.

In all cases, the dupes move forward with the same promise of sensation, surprise and amazement, and the possibility of collecting memories worthy of being featured on social networks. Life is a matter of perspective, and exoticism is not always a matter of distance.

Some will see this as confirmation that the appearance of things now counts (at least) as much as the things themselves. The primacy of the sign over the object, and of the effect over reality. Why should we be surprised when our daily lives are now measured behind screens, leading us to live more and more in the gaze of others?

The food markets still seem to be safe from this phenomenon, since the dupes here are called distributor brands so that they can be clearly identified. But who knows if, one day, we won’t see unknown brands appearing on our shelves, born “elsewhere”, in countries whose daily lives we know nothing about, with codes largely inspired by our national brands? If no one is fooled by dupes, no market is safe from them.