While no one’s sure what the final terms of Britain’s divorce from Europe will be, French businessmen are angling for closer ties with businesses now based in Britain with a cute ad campaign that plays on British slang for the French and London’s famous fogs.
Many overseas companies have made London, one of EU’s financial capitals, their European home, but with Britain moving toward leaving not only the European Union but possibly its single market, many will need a new base.
So, in London train stations, and in the City, London’s business district, the posters are going up, with a cartoon frog wearing a French-tricolor necktie and asking “Tired of the fog? Try the frogs!”
The ads push La Defense, the big modern business district at the western edge of Paris as a choice, offering it as a “turn-key destination, with a flowering economic ecosystem in the heart of Europe.” About 500 companies, 40% foreign, already are headquartered there, at rentals about a third of those in London’s City area.
