Chronic. The least populated municipality in Maine-et-Loire, La Lande-Chasles has exactly twenty-four times more subscribers on its social networks – 1,241 on Facebook, 1,326 on Twitter, 321 on Instagram and 72 on TikTok – than it does not list any inhabitants, numbering 123. The hamlet does not however shelter any remarkable site, neither grotto conducive to apparitions nor inn where Napoleon would have slept, which would explain such enthusiasm. La Lande-Chasles has just for mayor Jean-Christophe Rouxel, 53, who is also his Community Manager appointed.
A part-time coach driver, the city councilor has only one obsession: getting his village talked about in the media – and him too, incidentally. At the end of September, the microcommune received the special jury prize of the Hashtags 2021, a ceremony organized by the Social Media Observatory of the Territories, which rewards each year the best actions of communities on the Web. A trophy given to the town of Angevin for “All of his work”.
And what a work! Elected mayor in 2014, re-elected in 2020, Mr. Rouxel knows how to do it when it comes to buzz. It all really started in January 2017 when, taking advantage of a happy homophony between the name of his town and the American musical La La Land, he parodies the film poster by pasting his photo on Ryan Gosling’s head: the first hit on social networks. The second occurs four months later, between the two rounds of the presidential election: six baby tits were born in the letterbox hanging on the door of the town hall; the mayor then asks voters to go behind the building to go and vote without disturbing the chicks. AFP takes up the subject. Bingo!
#LALALAND Humor courtesy of SND – Groupe M6 / Misappropriation of “La La Land” movie poster to talk… https://t.co/FEDJZiKiU1
Rebelote a year later on the occasion of the Europeans, where 34 lists are in contention. Not having enough electoral signs, the municipality will stretch an agricultural tarpaulin dedicated to the cultivation of asparagus, in order to put up all the posters of the candidates. “I had taken the precaution of checking that the law did not oblige anything in terms of support”, specifies Mr. Rouxel. The year 2020 will be just as prolific in terms of media hype: in May, La Lande-Chasles wins a competition organized on Twitter for the most beautiful coat of arms in France, thanks to a badge representing a squirrel – coat of arms drawn on a computer by the mayor himself ; that year, the town also became the first in the Pays de la Loire region to provide its war memorial with a QR code referring to the biographies of soldiers who died on the battlefield.
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