UPDATE: Publicis’ Marcel deleted the Facebook post below from its page after we ran this story.
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Oh hey, you clicked!
To clarify, this isn’t a scandal or anything…though the optics could be weird for people who don’t think that international holding companies should be promoting pornography. Also, it’s kind of amusing.
Here is a picture of Marc Dorcel–who claims to be Europe’s top porn producer–and Anna Polina, the aforementioned star who works for Dorcel’s company and happens to be a fan of the Publicis Groupe.
Here’s another one of Ms. Polina.
Two days ago, they were both hanging out on the Publicis headquarters’ private terrace located at 133 Champs-Elysees, Paris.
You’re probably familiar with the space from shots like this one:
…and this one.
The balcony is primarily used by Maurice Levy himself, and we hear that most staffers don’t have access.
The event at which the photos were taken came at a weird time. For context, attendees at this week’s 4A’s conference in Miami inevitably discussed the Gustavo Martinez case as various speakers debated whether the advertising industry at large still has a problem with sexism.
Levy got defensive when asked about it. DDB’s Wendy Clark, Nancy Hill and others disagreed with him…and Sir Martin Sorrell followed by accusing him of being out of touch: “Maurice has a habit of ignoring the facts…It’s not just looking at the charges against Gustavo Martinez, it’s looking elsewhere in the industry.” Grrrr.
Perhaps appropriately, the photo shoot above happened on the very day that Levy effectively argued that people need to stop complaining about sexism in advertising.
Here’s another picture of Polina with Ghislain Faribeault, VP of Dorcel Media.
Again, this is not a scandal: the number of Pornhub posts on Adweek alone confirm that the industry is now mainstream, and Dorcel is a client of Marcel, the “Creative & Interactive Agency” with offices in the building (hence the logo on the hats). Publicis Groupe is not trying to hide its association with the guy or anything like that.
For example, a post that went live on Marcel’s Facebook page yesterday features another image from the same shoot with the text:
“We were looking for of the faces for the launch of our new line of hats. Who knows why we turned to Marc Dorcel, Anna Polina and our client Ghislain Faribeault?”
And here’s a case study on Marcel’s website for a project in which the agency was tasked with convincing porn fans that they should pay for Dorcel’s work. The key angle? Everyone could check out his movies for free…as long as they didn’t use their hands.
Based on Dorcel’s own tweet, it would seem that the meeting surrounding the shoot was all about celebrating the success of that campaign. (Note the hashtag #SansLesMains.)
Avec @annapolinaxxxx sur les Champs-Elysées pour travailler sur #SansLesMains 2 pic.twitter.com/5oH6EJ9rkX
— Marc Dorcel (@dorcel) March 23, 2016
So this post isn’t about Publicis executives “behaving badly” or stereotyping everyone who chooses to work in porn for whatever reason. People over the age of 21 can legally watch it in most countries; many porn stars both male and female have called themselves feminists and Cindy Gallop is cool with that. Make of it all what you will.
But is it really seen as standard for such stars to hang out on your company’s awesome balcony while wearing your new branded gear? Can you imagine McCann, DDB or–even better–J. Walter Thompson New York doing something like this?
We definitely can’t. But then we’re not French.