LE FIGARO. - How did Valéry Giscard d'Estaing mark a break in political communication with his 1974 presidential campaign?
Jacques Séguéla. -
We were, before him, still at the time of political advertising.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in addition to being the great modernizer of France will have been the great modernizer of political communication.
Under de Gaulle or Pompidou, communication had to be solemn: We spoke and showed little.
Everything was extremely prepared.
General de Gaulle was renowned for rehearsing and learning his speeches by heart, in front of the mirror.
Because Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, the founder of Publicis, had advised him not to read his notes with his glasses in order to appear more himself.
This is to say how weak the communication was.
Giscard will break with all this, by becoming passionate about the British and American campaigns.
That of Kennedy, in particular.
It is this type of campaign that he will import in France.
Can we say that he is the first head of state to really tame television?
He will learn the small screen, a bit like one learns economics: with reason and stiffness.
He will scrutinize the programs of the time such as Cartes sur table.
And he will indeed be the first to understand that television will become the kingmaker.
De Gaulle, who encountered real flops on television when he wanted to address the French, always preferred the radio.
It is truly Giscard who switches the presidency of the Republic from audio to video.
He will however be faced with the limit of the exercise.
The more he will show himself to the French, thanks to television and these new ways of communicating, the more he will show them who he really is: someone very rigid and very intelligent at the same time.
To read also: Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the death of a gifted man
Paradoxically, those for whom his communication “effects” were most intended, the youth, the popular categories, are those who ousted him from power in 1981. How do you explain it?
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has perhaps not sufficiently integrated that a President of the Republic is loved when he looks like the French.
Of course, the French also expect the Head of State to sometimes know how to get on top.
Have a Jupiterian attitude.
You have to know how to embody these two beings at the same time.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing never succeeded in becoming an average Frenchman because he was too trapped by his education, by his particle name, by his family and his youth.
He did some testing with some really good ideas.
These famous postcards - the first -: whether it is the accordion, his dinners with the French, sharing a breakfast with the garbage collectors.
The fact remains that in his contact with the public, this phrasing very calm, very written, very beautiful even, will not pass.
In 1988, he lost on a challenge of pride.
He did not think Mitterrand capable of defeating him and engaged in the campaign in a haughty fashion.
Which of his inspirations, in your opinion, is the most popular in political communication?
His 1974 campaign poster, with his daughter Jacinte in the countryside, is a perfection of poetry.
A lesson to all the creative people of the world.
To the point of having succeeded in being elected without a slogan!
His sense of the formula, too.
Until the last gesture, this empty chair that everyone criticized him for.
Yet it was a beautiful idea, very symbolic.
A real advertising spot.
He will have brought a few grams of tenderness into this world of bullies that is politics.
Until his intelligence takes precedence over tenderness.