American Style: European Ads Show That Ol' Yankee Spirit

PARIS - A television commercial for Dutch radios is set at a railroad crossing in the Arizona desert. A French TV advertisement for cookies features nubile, giggly American girls on a beach somewhere in the United States.

Razor blades are being hawked on French television by European actors wearing American football helmets. Meanwhile, a line of French cars is being promoted these days in a highly stylized TV commercial filmed on a lonely highway in Southern California. The accompanying music for the car commercial is the classic American pop tune, ``On the Road Again,'' by Canned Heat.

A visitor to Europe these days might be astonished to see how American themes and images dominate television and movie commercial advertising. From cookies to razor blades, boom boxes to beer, America increasingly is employed by Europeans to sell European products to fellow Europeans.

American advertising icons such as the Marlboro man and the clean-cut Coca-Cola youth have been familiar faces on European screens for decades. But the widespread use of American settings for European products is something new.

The main reason for the ``America Sells'' trend is simple: In the critical youth and young adult market (ages 15 to 25), the American popular culture is more dominant than ever.

``The movies they like best are American,'' said Claire Hakmi, television product director for a French ad agency. ``All the sportswear they want is American or modeled on American styles. The sneakers they wear are American. The sweat shirts they wear are American.''

The fashions are dictated by the powerful American communications industry, but they also represent a casual, open quality that offers a break from the strait-laced dress and behavior strictures of traditional Europe. ``It's the cote nonchalant - the relaxed attitude - of the Americans that attracts them,'' said French advertising executive Jean-Jacques Sibille.

But there is also a more subtle factor behind the Americanization of television and movie trailer advertising on the Old Continent. As Western Europe moves closer to the dream of creating a single unified market in 1992, advertisers are struggling to find universal, pan-European themes that work in all 12 European Community countries.

Experience has shown them that Italian motifs do not necessarily sell soap in Britain; with some exceptions, French themes do not work in Germany.

``The German doesn't really want to hear what the French guy has to say about razor blades,'' said Barrington Hill, an American advertising executive based in London. ``But he will listen to an American.''

Using American themes lets European advertisers bypass historical nationalism and enmities.

``If you borrow an American atmosphere,'' explained Mathieu Lorja, director of European advertising for Phillips, ``it neutralizes the typical European cultural differences. If you filmed a commercial in Italy, for example, no matter how hard you tried to be `pan-European' you would still probably end up with some Italian influences that might make it difficult to sell something in France or other European countries.''

Lorja supervised one of the most blatant uses of Americana to sell European products: a recent television and movie commercial for electric shavers, filmed in the southwestern U.S., that even features an American flag. The main message of the commercial - which, ironically, might easily be considered too nationalistic to air in the United States - is that America is the ``Land of the Free'' and the new cordless razor grants its user ``freedom'' from electric cords.

Pervasive American culture has been adopted as a kind of bridge language among European cultures.

All the major European countries have American television series on their private and public networks. American cinema is popular everywhere. With global cable networks like Atlanta-based CNN, many Europeans even have regular access to American accents and perspectives.

As French television commentator Christine Ockrent said ironically: ``The only truly pan-European culture is the American culture.''

In addition, the ambivalence and resentment that once marked European attitudes toward the United States, particularly during the Vietnam War, have largely evaporated.

``The United States remains a myth that makes people dream - especially the young,'' said Eric Barenton, the executive in charge of a recent campaign by Peugeot, the French automobile manufacturer, the one filmed in Southern California and using ``On the Road Again.''

Commented Christine Celle, a buyer for Chevignon, a chain of trendy French stores that sell southwestern U.S. furnishings and clothes in France: ``I think what fascinates the French about America is the space - one has the feeling of escape there. France is a beautiful country but small. In the States, you have an impression of diversity. It's a dream. It's magic.''

In fact, the America that is being used to sell things to Europeans is a mythological America of the past, without many of the contemporary complications and problems.

A pioneer in exploiting this mythic theme - in fact, the trend-setter of the recent series of similar European ads that fall into what is being called the ``pickup truck genre'' of commercials - was the London office of the New York-based agency Bartle, Bogle & Hegarty.

Four years ago, the agency launched an innovative European campaign for Levi-Strauss, the jeans manufacturer. The current commercial features a young man in jeans driving a battered pickup down a typical two-lane American highway, circa 1955.

The commercial was filmed in Southern California using American actors but was designed for exclusive showing in Europe. Indeed, it probably would not meet American TV standards, since the main character, a James Dean look-alike, wins the girl, an Olivia Newton-John look-alike, by stripping off his pants and using them to tow another car.

``European attitudes toward the use of the physical person are different,'' said Stephen Gash, account director for the Levi's campaign, choosing his words carefully.

In short, sex and nudity can be used more openly in Europe than in the United States.

``Just borrowing American imagery and shoving it at their heads is not going to work,'' said Gash, who recalled a disastrous campaign to sell a European hair product by using a Cadillac and a typical American car wash. ``For some reason, the woman drives her Cadillac through the car wash and comes out the other side nicely coiffed. It didn't make any sense.''