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THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH POLITICAL COMMUNICATION | 147

During the fourteen years of François Mitterrand’s era, professionalisation of electoral
campaigning was not an isolated phenomenon.As ruling President,he extensively used
all the range of professionalised political communication, not only to help enforce his
policy, but also, in a deliberate and systematic way, to build and sustain his image. In
1984, he was the first French President to permanently employ a political
communication consultant, Jacques Pilhan, who guided even his most insignificant
public appearance. In particular, within a year of being hired, Pilhan conceived for
Mitterrand a memorable image-building televised show ‘Ca nous interesse monsieur le
Président’ (‘It’s of interest to us, Mister President’) where he had Mitterrand capitalising
on the popularity of Yves Mourousi, one of the most popular television journalists and
host at the time, in order to start rebuilding his image after the socialist party defeat in
the 1986 parliamentary election. Here, Mitterrand was presented as knowing how
youngsters really talk and what interested them, as a first step of a long-run image-
building strategy intended to help his re-election in 1988 and to obliterate the fact that,
by then,he would be much older than most of his probable opponents.

This professionalisation of the Presidential public relations and communication went
down to every level of his administration. The ‘official’ communication office of the
Government was also reorganised as a strong taskforce by communication theorist and
professional Jean-Louis Missika, who considerably strengthened the status of the
Service d’Information et de Diffusion du Premier Ministre (Information and Diffusion
Office of the Prime Minister), now known as the Service d’information du
Gouvernement (Government Information Service). Similarly, directors of
communications started to become high-ranking officers within the Ministers’staff.

The final stroke of the professionalisation of political communication during
Mitterrand’s era paradoxically happened right after it had ended. Such was Jacques
Pilhan’s ability in advising Mitterrand that as soon as his long time adversary Jacques The Evolution of French Political Communication: Reaching the Limits of Professionalisation?
Chirac had been elected President,in 1995,Pilhan was surprisingly asked to join Chirac’s
staff. This caused turmoil, notably among the socialists, who felt betrayed by Pilhan,
though in truth the latter had never been a socialist activist. Surprisingly, this
unexpected combination worked very well, and Jacques Pilhan got along quite nicely
with Chirac’s main political communication advisor, his daughter, Claude. Pilhan
effortlessly advised Chirac in the same way as he had Mitterrand, for instance placing
him on television in December 1996 in front of journalists who did not normally cover
politics in order to sustain his popularity. So, in a way, Jacques Chirac has followed the
lead of his former old-time adversary with regard to his use of the whole range of the
routines of professionalised political communication. This collaboration was only
broken by the premature death of Jacques Pilhan in June 1998.

Such was the grip of political communication consultants during Mitterrand’s era that,
in a bold move, Jacques Séguéla started right after the 1981 campaign to boast in
television interviews about his ‘part’ in the victory, and somehow presented himself as 149