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Publicis Groupe is a French multinational advertising and communications company, headquartered in Paris, France. It is one of the world's three largest advertising holding companies (the others being Omnicom, and WPP). Its current president is Maurice Lévy. Publicis Groupe S.A. provides digital and traditional advertising, media services, and specialized agencies and marketing services (SAMS) to national and multinational clients.

Overview[link]

The company owns several full-service advertising groups that undertake a range of media activities: mobile and interactive online communication, television, magazines & newspapers, cinema and radio, outdoor. The company’s SAMS services include direct marketing/customer relationship management services, sales promotion, healthcare communications, multicultural and ethnic communications, corporate and financial communications, human resources communications, public relations, design services, interactive communications, events marketing and management, sports marketing, and production and pre-press services. Its media services include media planning, media buying, and media sales. Publicis Groupe's Vivaki pole has developed a technological platform supported by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and AOL Platform A technologies that offers advertisers the possibility to target specifically defined audiences in a single campaign across multiple networks.

In 2010, Publicis was named the third largest marketing group by revenue, replacing Interpublic.^[2] By the end of 2010, the twin sectors of digital activities and high-growth emerging countries represented one-half of Publicis Groupe's total revenue.

The company conducts its operations in over 200 cities in 104 countries. Publicis has a strategic alliance with Dentsu, Inc. The company was founded by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet in 1926.

Subsidiaries[link]

As of 2010, the main subsidiary companies of this group are:

• Advertising^[3]
  • Global networks
    • Leo Burnett Worldwide
    • Publicis Worldwide
    • Saatchi & Saatchi
  • Other creative networks and agencies
    • Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH): Publicis Groupe holds a 49% stake.
    • Fallon Worldwide
    • Kaplan Thaler Group
    • Burrell Communications Group (49% owned)
    • Bromley Communications
• Digital and Media
  • Rosetta^[4]
  • VivaKi
    • Digitas
    • Starcom MediaVest Group
      • MediaVest
    • ZenithOptimedia
    • Performics
    • Razorfish
    • Big Fuel^[5]

• Specialized Agencies^[6]
  • MSLGROUP^[7]
  • Publicis Healthcare Communications Group
    • Publicis Healthware International
  • Médias & Régies Europe

• Social
  • • Big Fuel^[8]

• Mobile
  • Phonevalley^[9]

See also[link]

• Communications
• LEVEL Studios

References[link]

This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (March 2012)

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "Annual Report 2010" (PDF). Publicis Groupe. http://www.publicisgroupe.com/documents/document-de-reference-2010-en.pdf. Retrieved 4 May 2011. 
2. ^ Brand Republic.. "WPP overtakes Omnicom as biggest marketing group". http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1047865/wpp-overtakes-omnicom-biggest-marketing-group/. Retrieved 12 April 2011. 
3. ^ Groupe Brands – Advertising
4. ^ rosetta,com
5. ^ [1]
6. ^ Groupe Brands – Specialized Agencies
7. ^ mslgroup.com
8. ^ [2]
9. ^ phonevalley,com

External links[link]

• Official website

Companies portal

v t e CAC 40 companies of France Accor Air Liquide Alcatel-Lucent Alstom ArcelorMittal AXA BNP Paribas Bouygues Capgemini Carrefour Crédit Agricole EADS EDF Essilor France Télécom GDF Suez Groupe Danone L'Oréal Lafarge Legrand LVMH Michelin Pernod Ricard PSA Peugeot Citroën PPR Publicis Renault Safran Saint-Gobain Sanofi Schneider Electric Société Générale STMicroelectronics Technip Total Unibail-Rodamco Vallourec Veolia Environnement VINCI Vivendi

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Maurice Lévy.

Maurice Lévy (February 28, 1838, Ribeauvillé – September 30, 1910, Paris) was a French engineer and member of the Institut de France.

Lévy was born in Ribeauvillé in Alsace. Educated at the École Polytechnique, where he was a student of Adhémar Jean Claude Barré de Saint-Venant^[1], and the École des Ponts et Chaussées, he became an engineer in 1863. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), he was entrusted by the Government of National Defense with the control of part of the artillery. During the next decade he held several educational positions, becoming professor at the École Centrale in 1875, member of the commission of the geodetic survey of France in 1879, and professor at the Collège de France in 1885.

Total strain theory Lévy changed the assumption, "the directions of principal strains coincide with those of the principal stresses", stated by Saint-Venant, to "the directions of increments of principal strains coincide with those of the principal stresses" and that was also the first attempt of using an incremental flow rule.

In 1888 Lévy inaugurated a system of boat-traction by means of overhead cables. A trial system was installed between Joinville-le-Pont and Saint-Maurice; it consisted of an endless cable which was kept in motion by powerful steam-engines and to which boats were attached and thus kept at a speed of four kilometers an hour. The system proved unsatisfactory, however.

Selected works[link]

Lévy is the author of several works, including:

• "La Statique Graphique et Ses Applications à l'Art des Constructions" (1874; 2d ed. 1887);
• "Sur le Principe d'Énergie" (1888);
• "Étude des Moyens de Traction des Bateaux: Le Halage Funiculaire" (with M. G. Pavie, 1894)

Lévy also wrote papers on kinematics, mechanics, physical mathematics, geometry, etc., in the "Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences", the "Journal de l'École Polytechnique", and the "Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées".

Lévy was an officer of the Legion of Honor and of public instruction, and a member of the Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Rome.

Notes[link]

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:  Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906.  Article, by Isidore Singer & Victor Rousseau Emanuel
• C. E. Curinier, Dictionnaire national des contemporains, 1899
• Osakada K. The 9th International Conference on Technology of Plasticity, Plenary 4, p. 24, History of Plasticity and Metal Forming Analysis.

Sir Martin Sorrell
Born	Martin Sorrell (1945-02-14) 14 February 1945 (age 67) London, England
Nationality	British
Education	Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School Christ's College, Cambridge Harvard University.
Occupation	Businessman
Known for	Saatchi & Saatchi WPP Group
Net worth	£115 million, (US$175 million) or more
Spouse	Sandra Finestone (m. 1970–2005) «start: (1970)–end+1: (2006)»"Marriage: Sandra Finestone to Martin Sorrell" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Martin_Sorrell) Cristiana Falcone-Sorrell (m. 2008) «start: (2008)»"Marriage: Cristiana Falcone-Sorrell to Martin Sorrell" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Martin_Sorrell)

Sir Martin Sorrell (born 14 February 1945, London, England) is an English businessman and the chief executive officer of WPP Group. He has served in that role since he started the company.

Biography[link]

Born in London to a Jewish family,^[1] whose ancestors came from Russia, Poland and Romania.^[2] Sorrell was educated at the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School then Christ's College, Cambridge, and has an MBA from Harvard University.^[3]

He joined Glendinning Associates, and James Gulliver and then worked for sports agent Mark McCormack.^[4] He joined Saatchi & Saatchi in 1975, and was group finance director from 1977 until 1984. Often referred to as "the third brother",^[5] he designed and carried out many of Saatchi's agency acquisitions. Sorrell undertook this by refining the practice of the ‘earn-out’.

WPP[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2011)

In 1985, Sorrell privately invested in Wire and Plastic Products, a British wire shopping basket manufacturer, and joined it full-time as Chief Executive in 1986. He began to acquire "below-the-line" advertising-related companies, purchasing 18 in three years, including in 1987 when he stunned the agency world with a $566 million "hostile" takeover of J. Walter Thompson. Sorrell followed this in 1989 with another dramatic hostile $825 million buy of Ogilvy and Mather. Since 2000, WPP has also acquired two more integrated, global agency networks, Young & Rubicam Brands and Grey.

WPP is regarded as the driving force for the period of consolidation which has been going on within the communications industry for the last ten – fifteen years. His WPP group has amassed the largest media buying group in the world, GroupM. Together with the creative agency networks, JWT, Ogilvy and Mather, Young & Rubicam and Grey, WPP is one of the three major players in the global advertising market.

WPP’s stock price soared and although the company then went through difficult times, during which it was on the verge of collapse, Sorrell’s determination and business acumen brought it around.

WPP has become one of the world's leading communications services and advertising companies valued by the UK stockmarket at £5 billion. With billings of £37 billion and revenues of £7.5 billion, WPP's operating companies provide national, multi-national and global clients with advertising, media investment management, information and consultancy, public relations and public affairs, branding and identity, healthcare communications, direct, digital, promotion and relationship marketing, and specialist communications services. WPP employs 140,000 people in 2,400 offices in 107 countries. He owns a substantial stake in the company through a series of pay awards and his own purchases of shares. Until recently he had never before sold shares in the company; his shares are worth around £70 million.

Sorrell himself is widely respected throughout the advertising industry, with his words being scrutinised and quoted by many within the marketing sector. Many industry observers credit him with the fact that the UK still has an independent, vibrant communications industry. His famed remark that the advertising recession in the early part of this decade was "bath shaped" was one of the most repeated quotes in the 2003 – 2004 period.

On 18 November 2008, WPP technically re-incorporated itself as an offshore entity in Jersey (Jersey is considered as a fiscal paradise by the OECD) in order to reduce an annual tax bill of more than £200million.^[6]

In 2003, after 33 years of marriage Sir Martin Sorrell split from his wife Sandra. Lady Sorrell was awarded £23million in cash, a Georgian townhouse, £2 million of bank deposits and two parking slots at Harrods (worth nearly £200,000).^[7]

Other interests[link]

Martin Sorrell in 2008

In 1997, he was appointed an Ambassador for British Business by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and subsequently appointed to the Office's Panel 2000 aimed at rebranding Britain abroad. In 1999 he was appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to serve on the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership.

He is a Governor of London Business School, and a member of the Advisory Boards of both the Judge Business School in Cambridge, UK and IESE in Spain. He is also Chairman of the Global Advisory Board of the Centre for International Business and Management (CIBAM), at the University of Cambridge, UK.^[8] In 1998, he was appointed to the Board of Directors of Associates of Harvard Business School and to the Board of the Indian School of Business.^[9]

Criticism[link]

In 2005 Sorrell sold £9m of shares in WPP at the end of a restricted stock holding period. He also agreed to change a contract with the company which had been much criticised by institutional shareholders in WPP as being unfairly written in Sorrell's favour. Under the previous agreement if Sorrell had been terminated, it would have led to a very large payout; the new agreement provides him instead with no termination payment.

In 2005 his pay was £2.42 million including cash and bonuses.^[10] Further he exercised £52 million in share options, is entitled to a further £5.8million in stock, and deferred further options on another 2.65 million shares valued at £15 million until 2008.^[11] In 2011 Sorrell's pay package increased by 70% to £4.5 million after WPP's pre-tax profits rose 28%.^[12] In October 2011 Sorrell went on the BBC to defend large increases in his and other CEO pay packages^[13] at a time when real average wages in the Western world are declining.^[14][15]

Shareholders have criticised aspects of corporate governance at WPP. This came to the fore again in 2006 with the advent of two court cases revolving around alleged corruption in an Italian subsidiary and contract disputes with the US launch of the OK! magazine.

In June 2008 WPP drew strong criticism for the involvement of an agency, 'Imago', in which WPP's Y&R subsidiary held a minority interest, with the ZANU-PF presidential campaign in Zimbabwe. A report by the Financial Times^[16] found out that Imago was employed by Robert Mugabe's campaign for reelection to the presidency of Zimbabwe. WPP subsequently divested Y&R's minority interests in Zimbabwe.

Recognition[link]

He was knighted at the New Year Honours 2000 Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom.

On 27 September 2007, Sorrell was awarded the Harvard Business School’s highest honour, the Alumni Achievement Award, by Dean Jay O. Light. The award was also given to: Ayala Corp. chair Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, A. Malachi Mixon of Invacare, Donna Dubinsky and Hansjorg Wyss of Synthes.^[17]

Personal life[link]

Sorrell is married to Cristiana Falcone, Media & Entertainment Industries Director at the World Economic Forum.

Sorrell was previously married to Sandra, with whom he has three sons, but the marriage broke down in 2003. In October 2005, Sorrell cashed in £12 millon of shares in WPP to satisfy paying their £30 million divorce settlement,^[18] where represented by Nicholas Mostyn QC she was awarded: a £3.25m Georgian townhouse; two Harrods underground car parking spaces worth £200,000; £2m in bank deposits; £23.4m in cash; plus stocks and shares.^[19]

Despite the divorce settlement, Sorrell still had 13 million shares an estimated £80m valued stake in WPP at the time of the divorce, which represented around 1% of the company, plus his 2005 pay settlement award.

See also[link]

• List of British Jews

References[link]

External links[link]

• WPP website
• Interview with the New York Sun
• Cool Earth
• WPP moves to a fiscal paradise
• [2]

Alain Soral
Born	(1958-10-02) October 2, 1958 (age 53) Aix-les-Bains, France
Occupation	Essayist, journalist, film maker
Nationality	France
Alma mater	École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Subjects	Capitalism, communitarianism, feminism

Alain Soral (born October 2, 1958) is a French essayist, and film maker, as well as being the author of several polemical essays. He is the brother of the actress Agnès Soral. Soral lives in the French Basque Country. Since June 2004, he has been a boxing coach. Alain Soral considers himself to be in the political "avant garde" of French society, claiming that his remarks and comments are always at first condemned and later widely accepted by the mainstream French public.^[1]

Life and career[link]

Soral was born in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie and grew up in the suburbs of Annemasse (department of Haute-Savoie), where he attended a local primary school. When Soral was about 12, his family moved to Meudon so that he could go to a reputable private Catholic high school, the Collège Stanislas de Paris.^[2] Soral spent two years doing small jobs before being accepted into the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts at 20, where he studied for two years. Soral was then taken in by a family of academics, who encouraged him to enrol at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he attended lectures given by Cornelius Castoriadis.

Following his studies, and working with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche, Soral wrote a book on the sociology of trendiness: Les mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, as well as a fictionalised autobiography: Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien. The latter work sold badly, and this led Soral to turn away from writing for a time.

Soral then focussed on cinematic techniques, and after 2 promotional films, wrote and directed his first short film: Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie-glaces. After a stint as a reporter in Zimbabwe, Soral wrote and directed his second short film: Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière-sur-Seine.

In the mean time, Soral had joined the French Communist Party. He became interested in the works of Karl Marx and other Marxist thinkers such as Georg Lukács, Henri Wallon, Lucien Goldmann and Michel Clouscard. He published Sociologie du Dragueur ("sociology of the womaniser"), his most successful^{[citation needed]} sociological essay to date.

Soral performed in Catherine Breillat's 1996 film Parfait Amour !, in the role of Philippe.

He then published another polemical essay: Vers la féminisation ? - Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique ("Towards feminisation? analysis of an antidemocratic plot"), and spent the following couple of years writing and directing his first full-length movie: Confession d'un dragueur ("Confessions of a womaniser"), which was a commercial and critical failure^{[citation needed]}. Disgusted by what he called "a lynching"^{[citation needed]}, Soral gave up cinema altogether and returned to writing. He published Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre? - Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante ("Down to where are we descending? ABC of ambient stupidity"), followed by Socrate à Saint-Tropez (2003), and Misères du désir (2004).

Soral's penultimate book, CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce (subtitled Roman (novel)), was published in France on 6 April 2006.

In the 2007 he became part of the central committee of Front National, trying to place social issues in the program of the party. He left the party in the 2009.

His latest essay Comprendre l'Empire^[3] will be published in France on February 10, 2011.

Views[link]

Besides the sociological marxist analysis of the modern-day society, Soral's books tend to focus on seven main themes^{[citation needed]}:

• criticism of communitarianism
• criticism of feminism, especially neo-feminist movements
• criticism of the media and the society of spectacle in general
• criticism of capitalism and USA imperialism
• criticism of the mainstream culture
• the Arab-Israeli conflict
• the dismembering of Yugoslavia, and possibly of France

Notably, Soral has written:

Soral's analysis of society focuses on what he terms "desire society",^[5] promoted by the media and the cult of celebrity^{[citation needed]}. He has especially criticised monthly women's publications, which he believes alter the conscience and relegate women to the status of "objects".^[6]

As part of the debate on 'laïcité' in French schools, Soral claimed to prefer the Muslim veil to thong underwear.^[7]

Soral defined himself as a Marxist, and was a member of the French Communist Party in the early 90's. He left the PCF because of his opposition to the party's renunciation of revolutionary content^{[citation needed]}. Soral supported left-wing dissident candidate Jean-Pierre Chevènement during the 2002 presidential election^{[citation needed]}.

In 2005, Soral turned to the far-right, joining the National Front's campaign committee; he was given responsibility for social issues and for the suburbs under the authority of Marine Le Pen. Soral's personal journey has led some to compare him with Jacques Doriot, one of the neo-socialists in the early 1930s and Collaborationist under Pétain.^[8] He supported the Bloc identitaire's distribution of food in January 2006.^[8]

Since 18 November 2007, Soral has been a member of the central committee of the National Front which he left in early 2009 because of some ideas he was in conflict with (especially the menace of Islam which is not an actual threat for him).

In 2007, he founded the group "Egalité et Réconciliation",^[9] a think tank led by the ideas he developed in his books and his several interviews (an innovative mix between social and economical ideas from Left, and Values like Nation or morality from Right).

Controversy[link]

Alain Soral and "gay communitarianism"[link]

Alain Soral has denounced communitarianism as a "poison".^[10] He has been especially critical of the rise of communitarianism in the gay community, a term that he has sharply criticised, arguing that many homosexuals have nothing to do with Gay Pride ideology^{[citation needed]}. For Soral, Gay Pride involves promotion of the "Gorgeous Guy" model, youth, parties, drag queens, etc., and obscures homosexuality as experienced by older or working-class homosexuals.

The association Act Up rounded on his publisher,^[11] Éditions Blanche. Act Up stated that through books like those of Alain Soral or Éric Rémès, Éditions Blanche spread negative feelings and even hatred towards homosexuals. Act Up asked the director of publication at Éditions Blanche to stop publishing books by Soral and Rémès, and vandalised Éditions Blanche's offices^{[citation needed]}. The head of Éditions Blanche claimed that members of Act Up physically assaulted his executive assistant, and threatened to press charges. Act Up denied those accusations.^[12] No legal action has so far been pursued.

Alain Soral and feminism[link]

In his book Vers la féminisation ? Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, Alain Soral argues that women have always worked (in trade or agriculture, for example). To him, they would have invented feminism by tiring of their role as mothers. Soral distinguishes two types of feminism: that of the "flippées" ("freaked-out") such as Simone de Beauvoir, and that of the "pétasses" ("bitches") like Élisabeth Badinter. Soral claims that the most problematic inequality is not between men and women, but between rich and poor, and that feminists, who generally come from the upper classes of society, attempt to distract attention from this struggle.^[13]

Accusations of anti-Semitism[link]

In a report on the television programme Complément d'enquête (in its episode devoted to the controversial French humorist Dieudonné M'bala M'bala), broadcast on the French television channel France 2 on 20 September 2004, Alain Soral said:

These comments sparked much controversy and Soral estranged himself from his show-bizz friends like Thierry Ardisson, a French TV host and producer, though they knew each other for more than 25 years.^[15] Anti-Semitism is the subject of Soral's latest book: CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce. Soral defended himself some days later on the website oumma.com, claiming that his words had been taken out of context.

Following this programme, on 29 September 2004, Soral and several others were the victims of an attack by about twenty people wielding baseball bats, while he was signing copies of his book Misères du désir in a book shop called Au Pays de Cocagne in Paris's IIIe arrondissement. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the police investigation has found no leads so far^{[citation needed]}. Soral himself believes the act to have been the work of an extremist Jewish group such as the Betar or the Jewish Defense League.^[16]

In a 2005 interview given to the magazine VSD, Soral announced his intellectual support for the equally controversial Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, with whom he worked on the Euro-Palestine list for the European elections of 2004, before his withdrawal led Dieudonné to do likewise. During the France 2 programme mentioned above, Dieudonné is visible in the background, listening to Soral.

Break-up of Yugoslavia and France[link]

Alain Soral believes that Yugoslavia was dismembered by the USA, which saw an opportunity to gain political ground and influence in South-Eastern Europe by arming Albanian separatist movements in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Soral believes that community-ism in France could have a similar effect, if the French Republic fails to apply its prestigious 1905 Law of Separation of Church and State, which is enshrined in the French constitution.^[17]

According to a recent TV interview (Direct 8 / 88 minutes), Alain Soral stated; "that today, no-one was surprised to see French presidents, prime ministers and other high French political figures meet elusively with the Jewish representing body every year in Paris, meetings that go against the laws of France and send mixed signal to the Republic".^[17]

Soral finished by stating that such a course could only push other minorities to form political religious movement in order to be heard.^[17] According to Soral, this would be a step likely to divide France into its various religious communities, which would then weaken the independence of the country.

Bibliography[link]

• Les Mouvements de mode expliqués aux parents, with Hector Obalk and Alexandre Pasche, Robert Laffont, 1984

reissued by France Loisirs and Le Livre de Poche

• Le Jour et la nuit ou la vie d'un vaurien, roman, Calmann-Lévy, 1991

reissued under the title La vie d'un vaurien, Éditions Blanche, 2001

• Sociologie du dragueur, Éditions Blanche, 1996
• Vers la féminisation ? Démontage d'un complot antidémocratique, Éditions Blanche, 1999
• Jusqu'où va-t-on descendre ? Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante, Éditions Blanche, 2002

reissued under the title Abécédaire de la bêtise ambiante, Pocket, 2003

• Socrate à Saint-Tropez : Texticules, Éditions Blanche, 2003
• Misères du désir, Éditions Blanche, 2004
• CHUTe ! Éloge de la disgrâce, Éditions Blanche, 2006
• Comprendre l'Empire, Editions Blanche, 2011.
• Pour en finir avec l'antisémitisme Éditions Blanche, 2012

Filmography[link]

Actor[link]

• 1996 : Parfait Amour ! de Catherine Breillat : Philippe.
• 2012 : L'antisémite de Dieudonné

Director[link]

• 1990 : Chouabadaballet, une dispute amoureuse entre deux essuie-glaces (5 minutes)
• 1993 : Les Rameurs, misère affective et culture physique à Carrière-sur-Seine (10 minutes)
• 2001 : Confession d'un dragueur, avec Saïd Taghmaoui et Thomas Dutronc

References[link]

External links[link]

• www.alainsoral.com - Site officiel - Official site (in French)
• Alain Soral at the Internet Movie Database