In unison with the media comeback of Laurent Wauquiez since the start of the health crisis, the team of the President of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes has decided to ensure a very «terroir» to sell its local implementation of the national recovery plan. As revealed on Tuesday by the investigation site Mediacités, the community has sealed a partnership with Neo, a pure-player which broadcasts short videos on social networks and claims, four months after its launch, 100 million cumulative views. His specialty: infomercial, which duplicates the codes of journalism to distill “Branded content” licked – in short, respectable advertising. The founder and main shareholder of Neo is none other than the TV man Bernard de La Villardière, producer and flagship presenter of M6, known for the shock launches of his show Exclusive inquiry.
According to an internal exchange that Mediacités was able to consult, Neo plans to shoot and broadcast a series of five videos “Helping to enhance the region through beautiful figures of resilience”. The operation, planned between April and May, would target one million views. Problem: the campaign for the regional elections, so far postponed to June, officially started on September 1. Gold “If this information turned out to be correct, this new communication campaign would be perfectly illegal”, reacted in a statement the candidate (PS) of one of the left-wing lists, the former minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, before recalling that“No campaign to promote the achievements or management of a community can be organized in the pre-election period, any more than a new communication medium can be launched”. The opponent of Wauquiez announced seizing the Regional Chamber of Accounts and forwarding the file to the National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP).
“One video per week from April 12”
This will have no immediate effect: it is only after the elections that a judge and / or the CNCCFP will be able to determine if the communication operation of the region was likely to alter the sincerity of the ballot. Especially since the law operates “A rather subtle distinction” between the promotion that can be made of a mandate assessment and that of a territory, explains Me Jean-Christophe Ménard, lawyer specializing in electoral law: “Article L.52-1 prohibits communities in the six months preceding an election from promoting their achievements, their management and their activities, but that does not mean that they can no longer communicate at all. . They can as long as the information provided is neutral and makes no reference to the elections. ”
Laurent Wauquiez’s cabinet denies any violation of the electoral code: “In any case, these are neutral communications. We are aware of the legal issues of a campaign, we are not having fun at that. “ In a new article published today, Mediacités maintains its information : “In an email dated March 5, 2021, sent by the head of partnerships to several members of the communication department of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the Neo team recommends broadcasting its production, at the rate of one video per week , from April 12 ”, write the journalists.
“None of the filming has started and the videos will obviously not be broadcast before the elections”, ensures the cabinet of Wauquiez. But precisely, a post-election broadcast schedule offers two possible readings. Either the man on the right, a favorite to date in the polls, considers it a mere formality. Either he plans to leave these famous videos as a farewell gift to his or her successor “postcards”, for which his firm did not wish to communicate the amount of the estimate.
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