Intermarché's wolf learns to cook in 'Unloved' — 600M views, Annecy Cristal

Retail Christmas ads in France had become a ruthless war of prices and discounts, and Christmas is when people eat least healthily — Intermarché needed to own its 'better eating' positioning with emotion, not product placement, in the most crowded media moment of the year.

Tell Intermarché's 'eat better' message as a Christmas fairy tale from the character with the worst diet: the Big Bad Wolf cooks his way into the community.

Romance and Illogic Studios made a 2:30 children's-book-style animation in which the Big Bad Wolf learns to cook balanced food to be accepted, set to Claude François's 'Le Mal-Aimé'; it aired on French television in early December 2025 and was amplified on X and YouTube.

600M+ views worldwide in the first week, 20M+ on social within days, Claude François's song streams x4, counterfeit wolf-plush warnings — then Annecy 2026 Cristal, ADC 105 Best of Motion/Film Craft Gold Cube, One Show 2026, Cannes Lions Bronze.

In France in late 2025, supermarket Christmas advertising had collapsed into a price war: discount messages, deal mechanics, performance media. Intermarché, a retailer whose long-term positioning is 'helping people eat better', faced the double bind that Christmas is exactly when people eat least healthily and when emotional space in retail advertising was most abandoned. Agency Romance and animation studio Illogic Studios set out to win the season not with prices but with a story people would share.

The creative idea was to package the brand message as a Christmas tale told from the point of view of the character with the worst diet in the canon: the Big Bad Wolf. Rather than featuring the brand or Christmas clichés, the team reinvented the fairy-tale villain as a sensitive outsider. The 2-minute-30 animation, in a graphic style evoking children's book illustrations, follows the wolf learning to cook healthy, balanced food — vegetables, fish, shared meals — as the way to be accepted by the forest community. Claude François's 1974 song 'Le Mal-Aimé' carried the film like a soundtrack.

Released on television in early December 2025 and amplified on social platforms, the film crossed the border between commercial and cultural object within days. HuffPost, citing AFP, reported more than 600 million views worldwide in its first week; the e-marketing.fr trade press counted over 20 million views on X and YouTube in the first days alone. Listeners multiplied streams of Claude François's song by four. Demand for an official wolf plush became so intense that Intermarché had to warn customers about fraudulent e-commerce sites selling counterfeit versions.

The work then ran through the industry's award circuit: the Cristal for a Commissioned Film at Annecy 2026, Best of Motion/Film Craft at the ADC 105th Annual Awards (a Gold Cube), selection at The One Show 2026 in Film & Video, and a Bronze Lion at Cannes Lions 2026. The campaign deliberately used no AI, in contrast to several 2025 Christmas ads, and was praised for putting craft and narrative back at the center of advertising.

Telling the tale from the wolf — the character with the worst diet — makes the 'eat better' message intrinsic to the story rather than a lecture from the brand.

Christmas clichés were refused in favor of a classic villain, who arrives with built-in drama and a redemption arc audiences already understand.

Hand-drawn, children's-book animation plus a real French pop song made the ad feel like a short film people wanted to keep, rewatch and share.

Launching in the moment the category was noisiest about price let an emotional story own the only space left — 600M+ views in a week followed.

The universal theme of a misunderstood outsider trying to change meant the film resonated beyond France and beyond supermarket advertising.

At the moment every rival shouts price, claim the empty emotional space: tell the brand message from the villain's point of view, so it feels universal instead of promotional.

Unloved became one of the most-watched, most-awarded Christmas campaigns of 2025-26: 600M+ views in its first week, Claude François's 'Le Mal-Aimé' streams quadrupling, then Annecy's Cristal for a Commissioned Film, ADC 105 Best of Motion/Film Craft, The One Show 2026 and a Cannes Lions Bronze. Wolf-mania pushed Intermarché to prepare an official plush and warn customers against counterfeit sellers; Illogic Studios announced a first animated feature film in development. For Intermarché it proved a supermarket could win Christmas on storytelling rather than price.