Maurice Lévy: 'The role of advertising is to seduce': in America, they drive their Chevy to Lévy

The chief of Publicis talks to Irene Hell about winning smiles, 'petites folies' and the art of conquering the US with humility

Maurice Lévy may well occupy one of the nicest offices in the world. Visiting the chairman and chief executive of Publicis at the group's sumptuous headquarters overlooking the Arc de Triomphe is like being given an audience at the Elysée Palace. And the head of the world's fourth-largest marketing services group and biggest buyer of advertising - with a turnover of $34.6bn (around £19bn) in the past year - lives up to his surroundings.

Maurice Lévy may well occupy one of the nicest offices in the world. Visiting the chairman and chief executive of Publicis at the group's sumptuous headquarters overlooking the Arc de Triomphe is like being given an audience at the Elysée Palace. And the head of the world's fourth-largest marketing services group and biggest buyer of advertising - with a turnover of $34.6bn (around £19bn) in the past year - lives up to his surroundings.

"I think that the role of advertising is to seduce," he intones in heavily accented English. "When you are seducing a person, you are not showing the worst part of your personality. You start by showing your smile and by showing the good part of your personality. And that is what we are doing with a product."

Lévy continues passionately: "Why shouldn't you use a good shampoo or a good toothpaste brand? Why can't you spend your money by having 'une petite folie' - buying something you don't need but something that will make you feel good, a luxury that gives you pleasure?"

Critics have accused Lévy himself of indulging in one or two petites folies in recent years, after an expansion spree in which Publicis bought Saatchi & Saatchi in the UK and 3Com in the US, creating a company with four times the turnover it had five years ago. But Lévy can point to annual revenues of €4bn (£2.6bn) and operating profits of €590m. The logo of Publicis, a flaming lion's head, is now a truly global brand - with footholds in the rapidly expanding Chinese and Indian markets as well as America, Europe and Japan.

Publicis paid £23m for 50.1 per cent of Freud Communications last week, but asked if he might indulge himself further by buying its French rival, Havas, which is being unsettled by corporate raider Vincent Bolloré, he is unequivocal: "No, we have no intentions to buy Havas."

The Lévy story stretches back three and a half decades. In 1971, aged just 29, he was hired as an IT expert by the legendary founder of Publicis. Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, who started the group in the 1930s, not only invented modern broadcast advertising but changed the French word for it from la réclame to publicité. He saw the genius in Lévy and only four years later named him his managing director. Publicis soon became one of France's biggest agencies.

But France was not enough. "We had a big problem when we started our journey to globalisation," Lévy recalls. "We are a French-based agency in a world dominated by Anglo Saxons. They invented the advertising business. They made the rules."

Publicis thrived despite this, but even today advertising is an Anglo-Saxon industry. Of the world's top three marketing services companies, two - Omnicom and Interpublic - are American. The other, Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP, is an American-leaning UK company. Yet Publicis, owner of the US agency Leo Burnett, is the lead advertising group for US stalwarts such as Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Kellogg's, McDonald's, Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola and Marlboro, as well as global European businesses like L'Oréal, Nestlé and Renault.

For some of his American rivals, it is still impossible to understand how a Frenchman gets almost 50 per cent of the whole US media-buying business - especially as the animosity between the countries in recent years has even caused some patriotic Americans to rename French fries "freedom fries".

"We are coming from a region of the world which is not known for being aggressive or for being very efficient," Lévy admits.

So how does he survive?

"Vive la différence", he answers with a triumphant smile. "We are different because we are French. We are different because I have quite a heavy accent and I am not the only one. And we are different because we believe in human values. In our business, probably more than in any other, human values are very important.

"We started in France as a small French company and we knew we had to deliver more and give more. More time, more dedication, more engagement and more passion." He pauses, then adds: "And we had to act with a lot of humility. That was the toughest part. Most Frenchmen fear it could cost them their Frenchmanship not to be not arrogant."

Given that Publicis advertises Coca-Cola, does he not rub his fellow Frenchmen up the wrong way? After all, they call globalisation "Coca-Cola-isation". Lévy is aware of the cultural clash: "We want to do something that is genuine to Publicis and true to the French culture. Therefore, we do not lock our clients or our employees into a prison of monoculture."

As head of an international communications conglomerate, Lévy sees himself as a European. So he is disappointed about the French "non" to the new European constitution. "I was very much in favour of a 'yes'," he shrugs. "I believe that even if the constitution is not the best, it would have taken us a step forward."

Maybe the French President, Jacques Chirac, needed a better promotion campaign? "Undoubtedly, I am extremely disappointed about the way the new constitution was communicated here. The French 'non' will be an excuse for the British not to vote and things will go backward."

The issue is very important to him: "Europe needs more competitiveness, more aggressiveness. Europe needs to be united in order to be a strong competitor in the global economy."

In the advertising world, Europe is still lagging the US, which Lévy says will show "an unexpectedly good year". Why is that? "Today in Europe the situation is not great. We have issues in Germany, France, the Netherlands - and Italy is not yet taking off. The UK also had a slow first quarter. So Europe is not really an area of great optimism. I am concerned.

"It is a problem of the mindset," he continues, "but there are also some hard issues. Unemployment is a very serious problem, particularly in France and Germany. And the fact that there is unemployment at a level that has not been seen before in Germany is crucial.

"We also have serious issues in Italy," he adds. "For example, their creative accounting and their grey economy."

Recently, Lévy has been throwing his weight behind the peace process in the Middle East, with a campaign called "Imagine" that he launched at the World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan last month.

"Both sides have suffered tremendously and are ready to make a move. We want to show them a why? and how? way to end the desperate 50-year-old conflict with dignity."

Dignity is a dominant theme with Lévy. Another is respect.

"The most important word for us is respect. We respect our clients, their brands, the consumer. We respect the people who are working in the Publicis Group. We respect their countries and their cultures, their languages, their roots. We don't want to change people's lives. We respect human values."

BIOGRAPHY

Born: 1942.

Career (1971): IT expert at Publicis.

1975: managing director of Publicis Conseil, the holding company.

1981: chairman, Publicis Conseil.

1987: Publicis reorganised and Levy becomes president of the supervisory board and chairman of the management board.

Titles: Commander - the French Légion d'Honneur and L'Ordre National du Mérite.