Chartres video agency: Reels, UGC and TikTok ads
Cosmetic Valley, the competitiveness cluster for perfumery and cosmetics, has its head office on place de la Cathédrale in Chartres: the city of stained glass is also a city of bottles and laboratories.
Scroll to learn more ↓︎Shooting, editing and publishing for brands in Chartres
Cosmetic Valley, the competitiveness cluster for perfumery and cosmetics, has its head office on place de la Cathédrale in Chartres: the city of stained glass is also a city of bottles and laboratories. Insee counts 38,324 inhabitants there in 2023, but 30,404 jobs in the commune, which makes it a labour catchment area far wider than its population. Esekai, a Paris agency, comes up to Chartres on a direct train to shoot creative ads, UGC content and TikToks with brands, manufacturers and shops in the centre.
See our workA commune that employs more than it houses
Insee's full report published in August 2026 gives an employment concentration indicator of 188 for Chartres in 2023: the commune offers 30,404 jobs for 16,171 employed residents. Every morning, thousands of employees therefore arrive from neighbouring communes. For a brand, the target is not limited to the 38,324 people of Chartres: it includes those who come to work there, have lunch on rue Noël Ballay or do their shopping before hitting the road again. Targeting a TikTok or Instagram campaign is then reasoned at the scale of the catchment area, with a message that speaks of the city as a daily point of passage. The same source counts 4,041 active establishments in 2024 and 670 businesses created in 2025, 77.9% of them sole proprietorships: many small businesses that need simple, regular content that is easy to adapt.
Bottles, skincare and Cosmetic Valley labs
According to the French Ministry of the Economy's directory of competitiveness clusters, Cosmetic Valley is based at 1 place de la Cathédrale and brings together 634 members, including 252 very small businesses, 297 SMEs and mid-caps, 47 large companies and 38 research or training bodies. The State awarded it its label for the fifth time in 2023. This network spans several regions, from Centre-Val de Loire to Île-de-France and Normandy, but its administrative heart beats in Chartres. For a skincare brand, social video has a very concrete role: a routine filmed in a bathroom by a UGC creator, a close-up of a texture for a Meta ad, a before-and-after demonstration on TikTok. For a subcontractor (bottling, formulation, packaging), the need is different: a short film on a filling line that shows the know-how to a buyer or a future technician.
Novo Nordisk doubles its Chartres site
In December 2024, the Banque des Territoires reported on Novo Nordisk's investment in Chartres: €2.1 billion from its own funds, presented during Emmanuel Macron's visit on 23 November 2023. The Danish laboratory, which produces diabetes treatments there, plans to double its production capacity, and the article announces 500 jobs expected within three years. A project on this scale creates a chain of communication needs: recruiting operators and technicians, presenting pharmaceutical production careers to the département's secondary school students, informing local residents. Filmed portraits of employees, thirty to sixty seconds long, in Reels or TikTok format, speak to a twenty-year-old candidate better than a job description. For the SMEs working around the site, a short LinkedIn video is often enough to make themselves visible to the companies that give them contracts.
Twenty-one sites lit up every evening until January
The 2026 edition of Chartres en lumières runs from 11 April 2026 to 3 January 2027, with 21 sites illuminated every evening from nightfall, until 1am until 24 October and then until 11pm, according to the event's official website. The list includes the royal portal and the rose window of the south portal of the cathedral, the theatre, the église Saint-Pierre, the collégiale Saint-André, the hôtel Montescot, the pont Bouju, the place Billard and the lavoir de la Foulerie. For a restaurant, a shop or a hotel, these evenings provide a free, ever-changing backdrop for nearly nine months: a Reel that starts in front of a projected facade then walks into the dining room, a night-walk TikTok along the Eure, a hotel story with a view of the projections. By day, the lanes of the lower town and the riverbanks offer a calmer setting for interviews.
Shops, restaurants and hotels in the historic centre
According to Insee, 1,020 of Chartres's 4,041 active establishments in 2024 are in retail, transport, accommodation and catering, or 25.2% of the total. On 1 January 2026, the commune had sixteen hotels, rated or not, with 895 rooms. It is a mixed clientele: cathedral visitors in for the day, executives travelling to see manufacturers, residents of the catchment area. Each audience calls for different content. For a restaurant, a TikTok shot during the lunchtime rush reaches local office workers, while a Reel of dinner under the illuminations is aimed at visitors planning their evening. A shop on rue du Bois-Merrain or rue des Changes can entrust its products to two or three UGC creators who present them at home, in their own words: it is this format, without heavy staging, that works best in Meta ads.
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