Loyalty for dogs vs customers : the Surcouf commercial

I have decided lately to share with my French audience some of the innovative and interesting commercials and ideas I see in the US. And as I was visiting Mickael Guillois' blog (in French), one of my favorite blog, I found this article about the Surcouf's ad for their loyalty card.

I like very much Mickael's blog, because he always has very interesting point of views and information about customer relationship management strategies and trends.

Anyway, here is my comment about the ad. But first of all, the background, as people might not know about the context.

Surcouf
Surcouf is a hi fi equipment retailer in France. Owned by PPR, one of the largest retailing holding company in the world, which by the way own the Fnac where I worked earlier in my career, Surcouf is a discount retail, located mainly in the Parisian area.

They have launched recently their loyalty card (which is weird for a discount company by the way), and have a communication campaign in France. Here is the ad below.

Description
As you can see, you have a dog in the middle of the board. The text on the right : "We are always rewarded for loyalty".
Indeed, the dog then represent the loyal customer, waiting for its cookies.

And that is the point of Mickael: Is it really a good ad, as the customer is compared to a dog. In his opinion, this ad means:
1 If the program won't thrill me it will at least turn me captive as this dog
2 That loyalty toward a brand is now a submission act totally unproductive: did this dog really earn something by becoming a pet?
3 That loyalty is a question of politeness: " Thank you who? Thank you doggie!".

My opinion
In my opinion, there is a double way to see this ad. The first one, it is creative, it matches the brand image of Surcouf, always innovating on its market. The comnmercial is funny, that is for sure.

But on the other side, customers are compared to dogs. And that is the downside. Does it mean that Surcouf considers its customers as pets? I don't know. But what is sure, it is that this concept can be taken in both senses.

And you, what do you think about it?

Blogged with Flock