One of Jean Marie Dru’s favourite stories is about our own Mark
Wnek. It centres on how Dru’s agency, BDDP, had been trying to sell Wnek
a campaign for a client that they shared across Europe. Wnek was digging
his heels in about running the ads in the UK. ’But it’s a great
campaign,’ spluttered its creator. ’It’s won lots of awards in France.’
’You know what,’ countered Wnek. ’Winning awards in France is like being
the downhill ski champion of Barbados.’
In a very un-worldwide chairmanlike manner, Dru is laughing so hard at
this point he can barely speak. But quite why he has told this
self-deprecating story is still not clear. To say that English
advertising is better than French? He’s told me that already; and I’m
not sure I agree. To illustrate how witty Wnek is? Or is it to
illustrate what Dru himself has spent the past 26 years learning - that
it’s an uphill struggle trying to rule the advertising world from
France.
Dru is what my mother would call a ’typically charming Frenchman’,
complete with impossibly hazel eyes and an instantaneous smile. He is
also a founder of the once-proud French agency network that was rescued
last year in a daring takeover bid by Mike Greenlees’s GGT Group.
Was it awful to cede overall authority to a bunch of Brits? ’No, no,
no,’ Dru replies vehemently. BDDP’s financial problems had forced it
into the hands of bankers two years before, he explains. There follows a
pause for dramatic effect: ’Let me tell you, being owned by English
advertising people is ten times better.’
Dru is frank about what he calls the ’three phases’ of BDDP’s
development.
Its dizzy rise to creative acclaim and international status during the
late 80s; the ensuing years, when it paid the financial price for rapid
expansion and the recession; and its third phase - the future. This, he
affirms, will be driven by gentle expansion, mainly through a growth in
international clients. ’We made mistakes in the 80s,’ admits Dru,
including BDDP’s infamous bid for Boase Massimi Pollitt in 1989. ’We
thought - wrongly - that time was against us. We thought that within a
few years all the major networks would have merged. Now, nearly ten
years later, we understand that we can do things more slowly,’ he
says.
Dru, however, is clear that he and his partners also paid a heavy price
for being in Paris instead of London. Chastened by Saatchi & Saatchi’s
disastrous spending spree in the 80s, money lenders were wary of handing
over cash for yet more agency networks to expand, and BDDP could not
turn to the Paris Bourse as an alternative, since it is not as big as
London’s Stock Exchange.
Dru has so far conducted the interview with exquisite arm’s-length
manners.
Any extravagant claims are preceded by the words: ’With no arrogance, I
say ...’, while a gentle probe into sensitive topics yields a polite:
’That’s a very good question ...’. But asked if BDDP’s future could
involve linking up with another major network (as is rumoured at the
rival French group, Havas), the tension rises palpably, and an almost
vulnerable Dru flashes into view. ’I’ve been there - to hell and back,’
says his body language, ’and I don’t want to return.’
His voice, however, falters for a second or two before answering. It
talks of how the world will still need at least 15 global advertising
networks to service all its major international clients and, using this
criterion alone, BDDP is sure of a place. Then we enter more emotional
territory: ’We’ve lost our independence once. We’ve lost a lot of money,
just to keep our integrity,’ he says, describing the years he and his
partners struggled financially just to find a buyer to keep the network
intact.
’Why should we lose our independence twice?’
FACT FILE
1971 - Joined Dupuy Compton and rose to be creative director
1978 - Moved to become managing director of Young & Rubicam Paris
1984 - Set up BDDP out of Y&R subsidiary SNiP, in conjunction with
Jean-Claude Boulet - also from Y&R -and later Marie-Catherine Dupuy and
Jean-Pierre Petit
1988 - Billings reach dollars 70 million without making any
acquisitions. Presence now in Belgium, Germany and Italy
1989 - BDDP makes audacious - and unsuccessful - bid for Boase Massimi
Pollitt
1990 - BST-BDDP launches in UK. Network now also covers Russia, the
Netherlands and a stake in Asia’s Batey Ads
1992 - Financial problems hit BDDP
1996 - Acquisition by GGT
