Adland

  Another of France’s classiest copywriters was Pierre Lemonnier, founder in 1959 of the agency Impact, who passed away in 2002. Having started out as a salesman for Philips, Lemonnier saw himself – and came to be regarded as – the French equivalent of David Ogilvy. A consummate wordsmith, he once said that he wanted to ban slogans and taglines from print campaigns. ‘To catch a reader’s eye, all you have to do is write S**T across a double page,’ he observed dryly. Instead, the body copy should be so good that it hooked the reader from the first sentence. ‘A piece of advertising copy is no good unless it’s infinitely superior in technique, in facts, in emotion and in rhythm to something a good journalist could have written on the same subject,’ he claimed (‘L’homme qui voulait bannir les slogans’, Stratégies, 19 July 2002). He was as good as his word, writing taut, compelling copy for clients as diverse as Tefal and Ferrari. His copy for Ferrari was based on his personal experience as a driver. ‘Nobody can put themselves in the place of the owner of a Ferrari 308,’ he wrote, defying the reader to do just that.

  Although Lemonnier and Michel were admired by their peers, arguably only one French adman has achieved celebrity status among the wider public. The ‘S’ of the agency Euro RSCG, his name is Jacques Séguéla.

  The house that Jacques built

  When I arrived in France to work at the advertising magazine Stratégies, the name ‘Séguéla’ was one of the first I heard. Eyebrows were raised when I admitted that it meant little to me. Officially the co-founder of Euro RSCG and the chief creative officer of Havas, to a large section of the French public Jacques Séguéla is the advertising industry. He masterminded two successful election campaigns for François Mitterrand in 1981 and 1988, engraving the slogan ‘La Force Tranquille’ on the collective French memory. Yet he has never positioned himself as a suave spin doctor. In 1979 he wrote a bestselling book called Ne Dites Pas à Ma Mère Que Je Suis Dans la Publicité… Elle Me Croit Pianiste Dans Un Bordel (‘Don’t Tell My Mother I Work In Advertising – She Thinks I’m a Piano Player In A Brothel’). Today, at an age when most men would have long retired, he takes the same infectious delight in his craft. ‘There’s no point in asking me to give up advertising,’ he says. ‘When I stop working, I’ll die.’

  Séguéla is proud to be part of yet another French exception. Outside the United Kingdom, France has the strongest advertising sector in Europe. For a start, the country boasts two giant communications groups: Publicis and Havas. Some claim that during the post-war period the pair formed an unofficial entente, agreeing to divide the biggest French clients between them, so they could freeze out the invading American networks. In fact, it’s more likely that they had a vicelike two-pronged grip on the market before the overseas networks arrived. The French are nothing if not nationalistic.

  But this doesn’t explain a second intriguing fact, which is that French agencies perform exceptionally well in international creative competitions, compared to their rivals in Italy, Germany and Spain. Séguéla believes this has something to do with the French mentality. ‘I always say there are three kinds of advertising. The English make advertising that comes from the head but touches the heart: it’s always rather intellectual. The French make advertising that comes from the heart and touches the head: it often relies on imagery that is romantic, emotional and sensual. The Americans make advertising that comes from the head and touches the wallet. It’s possible that the French approach, at least outside the Anglo-Saxon markets, has a more universal appeal.’

  It’s exactly this kind of quotable material that makes Séguéla such a media favourite. He’s always known how to seduce the press. Born in Paris and raised in Perpignan, he studied for a doctorate in pharmacy before setting off to travel the world in a Citroen 2CV – ostensibly to research his thesis on medicinal plants. His adventures resulted in a book that, in his words, ‘landed on the desk of the editor of Paris Match’. Abandoning the white lab coat of the pharmacist, Séguéla accepted an invitation to become a journalist.

  After Paris Match he moved to France Soir, where he rose to the post of editor before realizing that he was in the wrong department. ‘In my new role I had to liaise with both the editorial and the advertising departments,’ he explains, ‘and I became increasingly curious about advertising. It occurred to me that there had been many great journalists in history, and that I had only a limited chance of joining them. But something told me there were still interesting things to be done in advertising. At that stage, in the 1960s, it wasn’t considered a particularly reputable profession. It attracted a lot of people who simply didn’t know what else to do, which showed in their work. But with my training as a journalist, I felt that I could genuinely create better advertising.’

  In other words, he knew how to research clients, write copy and devise media-friendly events. With these attributes in his favour, he approached the advertising department at Citroën, a company that had brought him luck in the past. Before he knew it, he found himself working for the automaker’s agency, Delpire – run by the talented art director Robert Delpire. Unfortunately for Séguéla, at that point Citroën was pouring practically its entire publicity budget into luxurious brochures, while he still dreamed of ‘doing real advertising’. His next stop was a small agency called Axe Publicité, whose accounts included Lanvin, Olympic Airways, Volvo and Electrolux. Inspired by the revolutionary events of May 1968, when students and workers took to the streets, Séguéla and his colleague Bernard Roux approached their boss to demand equal shares in the agency. Instead, they were shown the door. Out of work, they decided their only option was to start their own business. With the creation of Roux Séguéla, they were halfway into the advertising history books.

  Creating an independent agency in France in the early 1970s was practically an act of recklessness. As discussed above, the government-owned communications empire Havas and the long-established Publicis formed an almost impenetrable block against newcomers to the market. In addition, the fledgling agency’s means were somewhat more than limited.

  ‘In those days there was no such thing as a golden parachute, so we started literally with nothing,’ says Séguéla. ‘For a couple of months we sublet an office from another advertising man who never arrived at work before lunch. So we’d use the place in the morning and he’d use it in the afternoon. We had a sign made saying “Roux Séguéla” and each morning we’d unscrew his and hang ours in its place. When we left, we’d replace his sign. In the afternoons, we’d work in the café below the office, where the barman found himself doubling as our receptionist. The only problem was that if we met prospective clients in the afternoon it had to be in the café, which was often frequented by prostitutes. We’d get them to chat up the clients while we dashed upstairs and begged to use the office for an extra 10 minutes.’

  The agency’s first campaign was for Mercury outboard motors. It placed an ad in the news magazine L’Express: an old paparazzi photo of then President Georges Pompidou steering a boat powered by a Mercury outboard. When he saw an advance copy of the magazine, Pompidou was enraged at this unauthorized use of his image. He called the publisher and demanded that the ad be pulled. According to Séguéla, 600,000 copies of the ad had to be ripped out by hand, over three days. The story made it on to the radio, which effectively launched the new agency. ‘We owed our sudden fame to an ad that never saw the light of day,’ he says.

  Positioning itself as feisty and anti-establishment, Roux Séguéla built up a modest portfolio of clients, mainly in the property field, and moved to larger premises in the 8th arrondissement. The founders were joined by Alain Cayzac, who had spent some time at Procter & Gamble before working at a small agency called NCK. Cayzac helped the agency break into the field of fast-moving consumer goods.

  Then, once more, Citroën appeared in Séguéla’s life like a four-leaf clover. He says, ‘By chance I found myself back in contact with Robert Delpire, who told me that he was on the point of selling his agency. Although I’d had several conv
ersations with Citroën about working for them, I’d always said that I respected Delpire too much to steal one of his clients. Now, however, he was thinking of moving on. He asked me if I knew anybody who might want to buy his agency. I thought, “Why not us?” Eventually we made a deal, and almost overnight we were one of the biggest agencies in France, with one of the most prestigious accounts. I’ve been working for Citroën ever since.’

  In 1978 Jean-Michel Goudard, another Procter & Gamble alumnus, became the final letter in RSCG. The agency’s key role in François Mitterrand’s 1981 election campaign, which swept the socialists to power for the first time in 40 years, sealed its reputation. The Mitterrand success was repeated in 1988. For a while it looked as though the agency could do no wrong – until, suddenly, it could. Now one of France’s top three agencies, it went on an acquisition spree, snapping up several agencies in the United States. This expansion programme might have gone smoothly had it not coincided with a downturn in the advertising market. By 1990, RSCG had amassed debts of around US $220 million and was teetering on the brink of ruin.

  ‘Building an international network had been incredibly costly,’ admits Séguéla. ‘We’d gone as far as we could, but now the well had dried up. The banks threatened to cut off our credit. I think we were about 15 days away from going under.’

  Ironically, a life raft appeared in the form of the organization that the non-conformist RSCG had once considered its polar opposite: Havas. The group’s advertising arm, Eurocom, stepped in and acquired RSCG in a deal that cost it US $300 million. The merged entity would be headed by Eurocom chief Alain de Pouzilhac. Together, the agencies formed Euro RSCG, a giant agency network with a global reach. It was a dramatic comeback, although at the time a rumour circulated that President Mitterrand himself had gently encouraged Eurocom to save his former advisers.

  Euro RSCG Worldwide worked hard to stabilize its international offering throughout the 1990s, when its network was criticized as inconsistent and lacking in central coordination. Confirmation of a successful turnaround came at the end of 2006, when it was named the world’s biggest agency (in terms of number of accounts handled) by Advertising Age. In 2012, however, under the guise of simplification, the network was rebranded with the name of its parent company: Havas Worldwide. Perhaps the word ‘euro’ had taken on unpleasant connotations of economic shakiness. Like so many agency brands before it, Euro RSCG was consigned to adland history.

  One of the jewels in the network’s crown was BETC, the Paris agency formed in 1994 by bringing together French talents Rémi Babinet, Mercedes Erra and Eric Tong Cuong. By that stage Euro RSCG had become bloated and firmly establishment – the new young agency was designed to revive its creative image. On the evidence of the awards that have flooded in ever since, the gamble paid off. And BETC’s Paris office is still possibly the coolest headquarters in town: an airy retro-futuristic space in the shell of a former 19th-century department store, where vintage chairs from the city’s flea markets cosy up to Jean Nouvel desks. Needless to say, it bears little resemblance to the agency that Jacques Séguéla started above a café in 1970.

  TBWA: absolutely European

  In late 1970 an intriguing pamphlet fell onto the desks of several French business leaders. Its headline looked as if it was written in code: Tragos, Bonnange, Wiesendanger, Ajroldi.

  The first page revealed that these were the names of four advertising men who had set out to solve a major problem facing European advertisers. The situation, the pamphlet explained, was this: after the war, despite the opening up of borders for international trade, European advertising agencies had largely failed to expand overseas. Not only were their accounts generally too small to fund the opening of offices abroad, but they felt linguistically and culturally tied to their domestic markets.

  The big American agencies, on the other hand, had not been so apprehensive. The need to service multinationals such as Ford, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble had furnished them with ample reason to traverse the Atlantic. Once they’d set up branch offices in the major European capitals, they deigned to handle a few local accounts – provided there wasn’t a client conflict. Their resources and experience were highly sought after; but their hearts lay in New York and Chicago. ‘For the American agencies,’ the pamphlet claimed, pointedly, ‘European clients will always be a second priority.’

  Bill Tragos (American of Greek descent), Claude Bonnange (French), Uli Wiesendanger (Swiss) and Paulo Ajroldi (Italian) had worked together at Young & Rubicam France. Now they intended to create the first European agency network: TBWA. It would set up shop in Paris and quickly open branches around Europe. Its vocation was not to be a creative boutique, but a major network capable of working with even the biggest clients. It would be ‘the first agency born international,’ as Tragos put it.

  Claude Bonnange, a strategic planning pioneer, had joined Young & Rubicam’s Paris agency in 1964. ‘The agency was doing fine, but not much better than that,’ he recalls over lunch in his Paris apartment. ‘So they brought in Bill Tragos, who’d turned around Y&R’s Benelux operation in just 18 months. Bill called his old friend Paulo, whom he knew from Y&R in New York. And the quartet was completed by this young Swiss copywriter, Uli. Not only did we become friends, but we had totally complementary skills. Bill was management, I handled planning and research, Uli was the creative and Paulo was the account manager. In three years, we took the agency from 15th place to 3rd. And more than half its billings came from non-American clients.’

  With success came temptation: all four received calls from other agencies (Bonnange recalls a conversation with Pierre Lemonnier of Impact, for example). This naturally pushed them down an alternative line of thinking: what if they set up their own agency? They had discussed the dominance of the American agency brands. They passionately believed that there was a need for a coordinated European network, rather than one cobbled together from agencies acquired here and there. ‘Built not bought,’ was how Tragos would later describe the TBWA structure. ‘We sat down in Paulo’s apartment and wrote the document that became the agency’s mission statement,’ says Bonnange. ‘Then we told Y&R that we were going to leave – and that they had a year to find replacements for us.’ He chuckles. ‘That just shows you how much times have changed.’

  Another event that would be unlikely to occur today came when the quartet finally quit Y&R. ‘We had such a good relationship with the media owners – the billboard companies and so on – that when they heard about our project, they offered us nine million francs [about US $1.7 million] worth of advertising space free of charge. So in August 1970 we were able to run posters, print ads and radio spots announcing the launch of TBWA, the first European advertising network.’

  The quartet quickly received calls from advertisers intrigued by their proposition. Despite the fact that they had signed a non-competition agreement with their old agency – meaning that they couldn’t take any accounts with them – by the end of their first year, they were making enough to open a Milan office. ‘We wanted to move fast because we knew that if we didn’t expand out of Paris quickly enough, our pledge to become the first European network would start to lose its credibility,’ says Bonnange. A year later came Frankfurt – and then London, where TBWA engaged a young creative called John Hegarty.

  Hegarty underlines the fact that TBWA was considerably ahead of its time. He observes that the very concept of ‘Europe’ was still fuzzy back in the mid-1970s. ‘In those days if you talked about Europe to a British client, their eyes would glaze over,’ he says. ‘“What’s all this about? I’m not even interested in what’s going on in Newcastle, so don’t talk to me about Milan. That’s somewhere you go on holiday.”’

  But Europe was not enough: TBWA realized that to compete with the biggest players it needed a presence in the United States. In a diversion from its usual strategy, it acquired New York agency Baron, Costello & Fine. This merged outfit snagged what became TBWA’s most famous account: Absolut.

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nbsp; The obscure vodka made by Sweden’s Vin & Sprit was imported to the United States by a company called Carillon, headed by a dynamic French salesman named Michel Roux (not to be confused with the London chef of the same name). Roux had arrived in the United States in 1964 with a degree in hotel management and worked his way to the top slot at Carillon. ‘A classic liquor salesman, he… used to make a nightly tour of eight or ten Manhattan nightspots, staying out into the wee hours night after night while always managing to put in a full day at the office’ (‘Absolut Michel Roux’, Business Week, 4 December 2001). This was how Roux became a regular at Andy Warhol’s legendarily bacchanalian Manhattan parties, an entrée that was to play a part in Absolut’s success.

  When Carillon hired TBWA in 1981, Bonnange and his team did some research to find out how consumers were likely to respond to Absolut. ‘We were given three pieces of advice,’ says Bonnange. ‘First change the name, because Absolut sounds arrogant. Second change the bottle, because it looks like it’s designed for urine samples. And third change the logo, because the blue lettering is printed directly onto the glass, which means you can’t see it on the shelf. We took these results to Roux, who told us to ignore them. He said, “At least it doesn’t look like anything else on the market. The bottle stays as it is.”’

  TBWA’s strategy – driven by the affable Roux – was to turn Absolut into a fashion accessory. The bizarrely shaped bottle was placed in every cutting-edge bar and nightclub in town. And to make sure opinion leaders knew exactly what it contained, the print advertising transformed the bottle itself into a logo. The first ad, devised by TBWA’s New York creative director Geoff Hayes, featured a bottle with a halo, and was entitled ‘Absolut perfection’. This visual pun set the template for every ad that followed. The number of executions now runs into the thousands – feverishly cut out, collected and traded by fans of the cult campaign. (The full rundown can be seen at a website called Absolut Ad, run not by the brand, but by a collector: http://absolutad.com.)