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THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH POLITICAL COMMUNICATION | 145

Of course Lecanuet did not make it, and De Gaulle was re-elected. But most of
Of course Lecanuet did not make it, and De Gaulle was re-elected. But most
politicians and journalists have credited his dynamic and professionalised campaign
with the fact that De Gaulle was not immediately re-elected and had to endure a
second round of voting.

Two years later,the final recognition of this thunderous arrival in France of professionals
in political marketing and communication came from the Gaullists themselves,
campaigning for the 1967 parliamentary elections. They hired none other than…the
same Michel Bongrand! He successfully fulfilled his task and dutifully helped their party,
the UNR, to win, notably against his former centrist customers. His most clever
accomplishment was to get the endorsement, so to speak, of the image of the Sower
which had been present on one side of French coins for decades: he included its
drawing on the visuals of most of the campaign material.

The same appraisal of Jean Lecanuet’s ability to surround himself with the best possible
political communication professionals was made some years later. Denis Beaudoin, the
communications specialist he had appointed at the head of his party’s first
communications cell, was later lured away and hired by Jacques Chirac to become the
Head of Communications at the Paris town hall when the latter was elected Mayor of
the French capital.

Public opinion polls also burst noisily on the French scene, thanks to the 1965
presidential election. While most of politicians and journalists had been assuming that
De Gaulle would easily be re-elected in just one round of voting, the main pollsters
bravely advocated that their figures, against all odds, were predicting a second round.
When the real outcome came to match the polls, their credibility was established. This
probably explains why French politicians have been so blindly trusting of pollsters ever
since,as we’ll see later. The Evolution of French Political Communication: Reaching the Limits of Professionalisation?

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, winning the 1974 presidential campaign, contributed further
to establishing professionalised political marketing as the core element of victory.
Giscard d’Estaing knew that he was hindered by his well-established image of a rather
bourgeois Finance Minister – the one who collects taxes in the eyes of the average
voter. So he tried to soften this impression by introducing personal details about his life
in his campaign. In one of the main campaign posters, he was for instance presented as
a charismatic father alongside his daughter, with his name only mentioned at the side
and with no political slogan: quite a ‘first’ for a French politician. For the first ever
televised ‘decisive debate’in France, on May 10th, Giscard d’Estaing’s media training had
been so intensive that he was able to deliver effortlessly many superb quotes,which are
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still fresh in the memory of the viewers and admired by politicians .Twenty five million
viewers witnessed the ease of the president-to-be in contrast to his obviously ill-
prepared opponent: François Mitterrand looked as if he was seeking shelter behind the
piles of notes he kept consulting to support his answers. 147