A friend to French Presidents
| Text: Gordana Ristić, Photo: Vuk Dapčević, November 2008 |
I met Jacques Seguela five years ago, when he was already vice president of Euro RCG, the seventh biggest agency in the world, the second in Europe… in the Cote d`Azur, naturally. Always in important places. When you see him in the lobby of a hotel or at a party, you can be sure that he is not there by chance. What for some may be a pleasant evening is the right place and time for change, for revolution, for linking the unlinkable. Two years ago I met him at lunch with the French billionaire, Baloret, on the beach of the Carlton hotel. The privilege reached its zenith when, while attending a lunch with such eminent people, I actually spoke to one whose job it was to create them. The man in question was Seguela.
He is what the English would call a “kingmaker”, or “a friend to all French presidents”. First Mitterand, whose campaign more than 25 years ago, he transformed into a revolution in political marketing, with the famous slogan: “the Mitterand generation”. Afterwards, he worked for all subsequent French presidents, while those he didn’t work for he considers his close friends who listened to his advice. Salvador Dali and Jacques Prever were on his famous friends` list… He returned to the public eye anew thanks to French President Sarkozy (needless to say, Seguela`s friend) and his wife Carla Bruni – needless to say, an old friend of Seguela`s. What’s more interesting - how presidents are made or how they fall in love? I put both questions to Seguela, who takes great pleasure in talking about his celebrity friends with understanding and camaraderie (as he himself was once the editor of Paris Match).
One duty of successful, famous and prominent women is to fight for the rights of their “invisible” and unprotected counterparts. In order to humanise our society, we have to introduce, through the front door, one oft-forgotten value in our private and public lives – solidarity.
Bathed in the sun of the Cote d`Azur, on the balcony of the popular Carlton hotel, I am adopting his trick and turning an inconvenient lunch delay into a good conversation, into a struggle to tell a great story to people interested in the secret of power. What sort of power does Seguela wield? Considerable power, evidently. Creative, energetic – because he is always active, creating new situations and concepts… and humane because he loves people and continues to fight for a better world and better advertising. His detractors say he is prone to self-publicising… I would call it a professional deformation.
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