IT is one of the most successful branding exercises in French politics, but François Hollande’s self-styled image as President Normal, Mr Normal and a Normal Guy is starting to grate on some French journalists, who have called for a moratorium on the word ‘normal’.

In the run-up to the crucial two-round parliamentary elections, which begin on Sunday, Hollande’s gestures during his first weeks in office have been designed to show how normal he is in contrast with the bling of his right-wing predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. The former Socialist party leader and rural MP wants to continue living in his rented flat in the west of Paris instead of the Élysée Palace.

Photographed shopping in a local supermarket before his election, Hollande prefers to travel by train or car — with his cavalcade even respecting red lights — whereas Sarkozy favoured jets.

He has cut his salary by 30 per cent and reduced his security contingent. His partner, the political journalist Valerie Trierweiler, who once described him in an article as a ‘normal man’, is the first presidential partner to continue in a salaried job.

Even before the daily Libération used the one-word front-page headline ‘Normal!’ to mark Hollande’s election as president in May, the word was fast becoming the most-used adjective in French political writing. When Hollande’s official portrait by the Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon, fêted for documenting French rural life, was unveiled this week, it was assessed as a ‘normal’ image of a ‘normal’ president.

Even Hollande’s health bulletin this week was headlined by the weekly Nouvel Observateur: “Hollande: ‘normal’ health for a ‘normal president’.”

But this week the website Rue89 launched a crusade against what it complained was the new cliché of ‘normal’.

After a Google News search returned more than 43,000 results for the search ‘Hollande + Normal’, and more than 88,000 for ‘President + normal’, the site launched a ‘No “Normal” Day’, hashtagged on Twitter, in which it beseeched journalists to broaden their vocabulary, asking did they really mean normal, or perhaps ordinary, natural, sober, honest or reasonable?

The initiative did not immediately seem to have worked as headlines about the D-day commemorations in Normandy highlighted the fact that the ‘normal’ president was travelling two and half hours by car rather than flying from Paris and that the museum and cemetery he was visiting would not be closed to the public. ‘President Normal’s visit to the provinces’, was the headline on the news weekly Le Point’s website.

“What’s the difference between a normal president and a hyperpresident?” the magazine asked, comparing Hollande’s trip by car with Sarkozy’s arrival by helicopter for a visit to Normandy last year.

Hollande, whose first test at the ballot box comes with the parliamentary elections on June 10 and June 17, has enjoyed high popularity ratings since taking office. A new Ifop poll for Paris Match this week showed that 63 per cent of French voters approved of his performance, although this was four points lower than the record-breaking popularity of Sarkozy just after his election in 2007.

— The Guardian, London