Jacques Séguéla

About Jacques Séguéla

At 25, he holds a Doctorate in Pharmacy. For this vibrant jack-of-all-trades, it was a wrong turn. He changes course and successfully completes the first round-the-world trip in a French car. A book: ‘La Terre en rond’, a first success: 150,000 copies. At 30, after two years at Paris Match, he is called to France Soir by Pierre Lazareff. He will stay there for another two years before becoming a television producer at ORTF. At 35, he partners with Bernard Roux. Roux Séguéla is born. The agency’s first advertisement features President Pompidou crossing out a Mercury engine. Result: seizing of L’Express and a skyrocketing start. Successively, Alain Cayzac and then Jean-Michel Goudard will join them. At 40, it’s an explosion: the launch of Carrefour’s private label products, deemed at the time by the public as the best advertising of the last thirty years (IFOP survey). Following will be Louis Vuitton, Le Printemps, Afflelou, and many others. At 45, the first book on his profession is published: ‘Don’t tell my mother I’m in advertising, she thinks I’m a pianist in a brothel’. An autobiography but also a love story of advertising. The campaigns follow one another, and so do the successes: Citroën and the Wild Chevrons, Dunlop and its famous love-torture-test, Carte Noire the coffee named Desire, Woolite and its stars. The following year, with a stroke of ‘Force Tranquille’, the now-cult slogan of François Mitterrand, Jacques Séguéla brings advertising into the history of France. At 50, the works of the ‘Son of Advertising’ are now translated into ten languages, including Turkish, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese. The creations multiply: Club Med, Air France, as well as Apple and Microsoft for their first European appearances. It is also the time for his campaigns for the entry into democracy of Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Poland). At 55, RSCG and Eurocom merge to become Euro RSCG. Alain de Pouzilhac becomes the Chief Executive Officer of the Havas Advertising holding, Jacques Séguéla serves as the Chief Creative Officer and Vice-President. At 60, while continuing to lead his group, he pursues his Presidential campaigns: Ehud Barak in Israel, Ricardo Lagos in Chile, Aleksander Kwasniewski in Poland, Janesz Drnovsek in Slovenia, Simeon II in Bulgaria. At 70, Vincent Bolloré becomes the President of Havas. Jacques Séguéla remains the Vice-President and creative head, and simultaneously engages alongside him in the development of his media group: Direct Matin, Direct Soir, Direct 8. At 77, he has written 25 books, traveled around the globe 100 times to create or lead the group’s agencies, and created or participated in over 1000 campaigns, including 20 Presidential ones (19 successful and one painful failure, that of Lionel Jospin in 2002). His latest works published in 2009 are titled ‘Unauthorized Autobiography’, you are never better served than by yourself, followed by ‘Generation Q.E.’, the battle of emotion against reason. His last advertisement, though not really one: turning the Eiffel Tower blue for the French Presidency of the European Union. The image will travel around the world (1 million shares). But for him, all of this is just the beginning: ‘Old age begins,’ he says, ‘when regrets outweigh dreams.’