Case Study — Brand Commercial
Can we transform a local Swiss legend into a humour imaginary brand commercial — and make it feel like myth?
Pirates and Robin Hoods run on the same archetype — the charming outlaw who bends the rules and is loved for it. The Alps gave us Farinet. We gave him a tricorn hat and a chest full of chocolate.
Legend
Farinet — Robin Hood of the Alps
Format
Short Brand Commercial
Territory
Valais, Switzerland
The Brief
The brief was simple: take a Valais legend and turn it into something funny, warm, and distinctly local — a brand commercial that doesn't feel like a commercial.
Farinet is the natural protagonist. The legendary 19th-century counterfeiter, the man who minted fake coins for the poor, the outlaw the region refuses to forget. His mythology already contains everything a pirate story needs: hidden treasure, a code of honour, irreverence toward authority, and a very good beard.
The adaptation writes itself: Farinet the folk hero becomes Farinet the pirate. The gold coins become chocolate. The chest is still a chest. The candlelight is the same. What changes is the permission to be absurd — and the realisation that the absurdity was always there.
The ad opens on an ornate wooden chest illuminated by flickering candlelight. Gold coins on rich velvet. A chocolate bar nested among the treasure. A weathered hand with a ring retrieves it, unwraps it slowly. A man in a tricorn hat, bearded grin, savours the dark chocolate by candlelight. Adventure, indulgence, old-world treasure. The punchline lands in the silence.
The Robin Hood of the Alps. A legendary Swiss counterfeiter who produced over 40,000 fake 20-centime coins in Valais between 1865 and 1880, using heated nickel discs and a hand press. His coins were often preferred over the struggling cantonal bank's paper money — earning him deep popular support.
Chased by authorities for years, he died in 1880 in the Salentse gorge under mysterious circumstances. He is the subject of C.F. Ramuz's novel Farinet ou la fausse monnaie, and is remembered today as a folk hero. A local alternative currency bearing his name circulated in the Valais region from 2017 to 2019. The Musée de la fausse monnaie in Saillon is dedicated to his life.
Process
01 — The Parallel
Both archetypes run on the same folk logic: take from the powerful, redistribute to the worthy, look spectacular doing it. Farinet's counterfeit coins, his popular support, his years on the run — all of it maps directly onto the pirate archetype. The humour comes from recognising the parallel. The warmth comes from knowing it's historically true.
02 — The Adaptation
The straight version of this story is a history lesson. The funny version is a man in a tricorn hat who found a chest full of chocolate and isn't sharing it with the authorities. We leaned into the second reading — candlelit, theatrical, slightly self-aware. Farinet would have approved. The indulgence is the joke, and the joke is the point.
03 — The Payoff
A weathered hand. A ring. A very slow unwrapping. The ad earns its humour by taking the indulgence completely seriously — no wink to camera, no ironic distance. The pirate savours the chocolate exactly the way Farinet must have savoured every fake coin: with the quiet satisfaction of a man who knows he's getting away with something.
Local legend is funnier than invented fiction. Farinet's mythology already contained all the comedic material — the absurdity of minting coins for the poor, the theatrical outlaw energy, the regional pride in a man who bent the rules and died for it. The pirate adaptation works because it invents nothing. It just gives the existing story a tricorn hat and a chest full of chocolate. Humour lands harder when it's rooted in something real. The audience already knows the wink is coming — they just need permission to receive it.