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The elderly Bleustein-Blanchet could be cantankerous, Lévy admits. ‘We yelled at each other on more than one occasion. But all the way through our relationship – even before we became close friends – I was often the only person who dared to say, “No, I don't agree with you.” Like all great leaders, he hated “yes” men. He didn't want courtiers – he wanted characters.'

To an extent, Lévy says today, he has never stopped working for Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet. ‘For all those years, my foremost ambition was that this man, this truly great man, would look upon me with the same amount of respect that I afforded him. Even now, I like to think that he would be proud of our achievements as a group.'

Under Lévy's watch, Publicis has grown to a scale that the kid from Montmartre could never have imagined. But we'll return to that story later (in
Chapter 11
, Consolidation incorporated).

Provocation and impact

Apart from Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet – and indeed Maurice Lévy – there have been other notable French admen. One of them was the late, lamented creative Philippe Michel, co-founder of the agency that evolved into today's CLM/BBDO. A sympathizer of the Situationists – the group of artist-agitators who inspired punk – Michel wanted to devise a more intellectual form of advertising, one that deconstructed clichés and winked at, rather than patronized, the consumer. Philosophical and provocative, with a trenchant wit, he could only have been born in France.

Michel ‘stumbled' into advertising after initially studying medicine, ending up in 1966 at Dupuy-Compton, where he quickly rose to creative director. In 1973 he founded CLM with Alain Chevalier and Jean-Loup Le Forestier. The agency went on to work for brands such as Total, Volvic, Vittel, Apple and Monoprix. For the fashion brand Kookaï, it created an entire attitude: feminine yet independent, bitchy yet seductive. Michel's philosophy was summarized by the title of a 2005 book devoted to his thoughts on advertising:
C'est Quoi, L'Idée?
(‘What's the Idea?'). When Michel asked you that question about a proposed ad, according to former colleagues, he expected you to come back with a quick answer.

Perhaps not his best, but certainly his best-known campaign outside France (and one that was appreciated by David Ogilvy) was for the
billboard contractor Avenir in 1981. The first of three posters showed a sexy French waif named Myriam, standing on the beach in her bikini. ‘On the 2nd of September,' the ad promised, ‘I'll take off the top.' Sure enough, on the appointed date, Myriam appeared with her breasts bared. But now she made an even saucier pledge: ‘On the 4th of September, I'll take off the bottom.' When the date arrived, the poster showed Myriam from behind, with her pert bottom on display. ‘Avenir,' read the tagline, ‘the poster company that keeps its promises.' Taking the advertising concept of a ‘teaser campaign' to its logical conclusion, it underlines Michel's taste for provocation.

Eminently quotable, Michel once observed that, as far as ideas were concerned, ‘complex doesn't necessarily mean complicated'. Referring to Chiat/Day's ‘1984' spot, he noted: ‘The job of advertising is not to sell, but to create a cultural link between the desires of the entrepreneur and those of the public.' He died of a heart attack in 1993, but his ideas live on.

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 conversations 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.