The brief was to increase the proportion of foreign tourists among the visitors. The Pompidou Centre is an exception in the landscape of major French museums: unlike other similar institutions such as the Louvre or Orsay, its share of foreign visitors is lower than its share of local visitors. In 2017, 3.37 million people visited the Centre: 40% are foreign tourists, and 60% are French. The ratio is almost the opposite for the other major museums in the capital, which have become must-see tourist destinations.

How can we attract foreign tourists to the Pompidou Centre when we have no reputation, no flagship work, no means, no legitimacy and no content ?

"Souvenirs de Paris" consisted in creating statuettes of the Centre, and selling them in the middle of the "real ones" to exaggerate the fame of the Centre... and thus convince the tourists of its unavoidable character.

The campaign takes a shortcut to notoriety by assuming unstoppable signifiers of notoriety: the statuette and the street sellers. The street sellers are the true influencers of the campaign. But the happening itself is only a pretext.

This is why this campaign is, in fact, the Georges Pompidou Centre’s first branded film for the international market. It was produced, deliberately doubled with a broad French accent, and subtitled in more than 43 languages with this ambition. The film is the real long-term recruitment tool. The only one able to increase the number of foreign visitors, enough to achieve our objectives. It is the centrepiece of the campaign, which the Centre has pushed in PR, in anticipation of next season, to reach foreign tourists during their travel planning.

We produced 30 000 statues that were sold in 300 different small businesses and street sellers around the biggest monuments

The guerilla campaign was launched on August 26th 2018 then the brand content film was aired from November 15th to November 29th

2 months after the film was launched, the campaign generated the following results:

A film watched by more than 6 million people on YouTube and Facebook, for a media purchase of €35,000. Top 5 countries: USA, Mexico, Canada, Argentina, France, having generated a considerable peak of traffic on the Pompidou Centre website from foreign Internet users (+321% over the film launch period).

TV spinoffs in many countries.

And results in terms of attendance that AFP attributes in particular to the campaign:

The Pompidou Centre, which houses one of the two most important collections of modern and contemporary art in the world, recorded an overall increase of +5% (+18% for its permanent collections) with 3.5 million visitors.

Observing foreigners -- only 40% of visitors -- do not know it well enough, the first French museum of modern art launched a humorous video in autumn, which was very popular on the Internet.