The purpose of the study is to assess the communicative and pragmatic potential of using precedent statements in texts of the modern French public service advertising from the standpoint of an addressee and an addresser. Advertisements for social causes (166 texts), published in national and regional periodicals between 2016 and 2020, were used as the research material. Scientific novelty of the work lies in taking an interdisciplinary approach to studying the phenomenon of precedence as applied to the modern French-language public service advertising discourse. As a result, the researchers have identified universal and specific features of using precedent statements in public service advertising, as well as peculiarities of their perception by representatives of the French linguoculture.