French Twist

Farid Mokart is enjoying a typical Parisian lunch at Publicis' private eatery, Marcel. Facing a glass wall overlooking the Champs-Élysées and a table replete with artfully presented liver, eggs and champagne, he talks about Janet Jackson's nipple.Despite the exciting football game of Super Bowl XXXVIII and the ads that clients spent millions of dollars creating, he asks, "Who was the winner of the whole thing?""It was a small nipple, the nipple of Janet Jackson, because it was the strongest story on the screen at [that] moment."According to Mokart, 38, it is this kind of story that advertising has to compete with these days—not other ads. And this is the competition he, along with partner Fred Raillard, 34, and their two-month-old Paris agency, Marcel, think about when trying to "tell the strongest story for the brand." Fred & Farid, as they are known, hope to deliver via their agency "only a universal and international concept able to travel on all media all over the world," explains Mokart. Their focus is on media-agnostic concepts that translate to countries outside of France for global, but mainly pan-European, clients.They opened shop with 10 clients shifted from other Publicis agencies—mainly from Publicis in Paris—based on what seemed "in sync" with the pair's creative vision, says David Droga, Publicis worldwide creative director. These include Nestlé ice creams, Allied Domecq, Heineken France, Krups Worldwide and United Biscuits, among others. In some cases, staffers moved along with the accounts to the 31-person office. That and the fact that Publicis in Paris is "such an enormous office" eliminated potential friction between Marcel and the other shops, Droga says. Plus, "the office isn't necessarily caught up in the process and structure of a bigger network," he says. "There's a certain free-spiritedness to them."The idea for Marcel came about during a March lunch with Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy in San Francisco, where the duo was employed at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for two years. Publicis wanted a boutique agency to compete with the likes of Mother in London and 180 in Amsterdam. Lévy pitched the idea to the team, Mokart says, and they jumped at the chance to return to their native France and run their own agency. While there's no place for Fred & Farid on Publicis' worldwide board, since that board deals more with the "inner workings of the network, which wouldn't apply to them," Droga says he looks forward to tapping into the team's creativity on future global briefs "where geography doesn't matter," he says. Droga says he has discussed with them the possibility of working on upcoming briefs. If the team helps win a pitch, first work for the client might come out of Marcel, he says, before being shifted elsewhere, depending on the size of the account.Marcel is "a good thing" for Publicis, Droga says. "They're not being set up just to be a Parisian agency. They're a resource tapped into by any [Publicis] office around the world." In addition to the clients they inherited, Marcel is currently in six account pitches: one worldwide pitch, of which they're in the finals; three pan-European, of which they're in the finals, the shortlist and the first round, respectively; and two local accounts, one of which they made a final pitch for last Wednesday. Fred & Farid have their own international experience to draw on: After meeting—and at first disliking each other—on the account side at Euro RSCG in Paris, they became a team, sharing art direction and copywriting duties, at several shops around Paris, before jumping to Bartle Bogle Hegarty in London, where they created Gold Lion-winning Microsoft Xbox work. One early spot, "Champagne," shows a baby hurtling through life at lightning speed, ending in a grave. That work caught Jeff Goodby's eye, and he hired them stateside. Their work is sometimes galvanic, sometimes irreverent: Pony ads depict a pregnant woman in boxing gear and an infant with a pierced tongue; Netflix spots include a woman grabbing greedily at an envelope during a wake. This edge may have kept them from producing more work at Goodby, but they say it was more about long client approval processes in the U.S. "Europe is more artistic, it's known that America is more business-oriented than Europe," Raillard says.So far, clients are buying into their approach of servicing international clients in nontraditional ways. Marcel is working on three United Biscuits brands, with the first work rolling out in September. Anthony Francheterre, gm of United Biscuits France, says, "They not only come with TV campaigns, they come with Internet ideas, street marketing, whatever, they come with broader- picture [ideas] which I find very relevant."

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French Twist

Mae Anderson

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Mae Anderson