Paris, 1926.

Publicis began in a small flat in Paris. French Wikipedia says Marcel Bleustein set up the agency in 1926 at 17 rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, and HEC Stories, the alumni magazine of the HEC Paris business school, gave the same street address in a history of the group published on 2 December 2020. Today the company is Publicis Groupe S.A., headquartered in Paris, and English Wikipedia says it is headed by Arthur Sadoun.

The name was built from two pieces. HEC Stories says it combines “publicité”, the French word for advertising, with “six”, which the founder regarded as his lucky number. French Wikipedia breaks the word down the same way: “Publi” for publicité and “cis” for the six at the end of 1926, a figure he came to treat as a lucky charm. The result is a single coined word that reads as both a trade and a date, and it has stayed in use as the name of the agency and then of the group for a century.

The emblem came from the founder too. French Wikipedia says he chose a lion-sun head as the logo of the young firm, drawn in a baroque style with a flamboyant mane, as a symbol of brilliance and success, the lion being his astrological sign. The lion has stayed with the group: B&T reported on 15 January 2025 that the Publicis lion is a staple of the group’s branding, and it reappeared that year inside the logo of a merged agency network.

The early work was local. HEC Stories says the agency launched its opening campaigns in 1927 for Comptoir Cardinet, the furniture maker Lévitan and the furrier Brunswick, all owned by friends of the Bleustein family, with lines such as “garantis pour longtemps” for Lévitan and “le fourreur qui fait fureur” for Brunswick. French Wikipedia lists Chaussures André among those early clients as well.

Radio followed. HEC Stories says Bleustein moved into broadcasting in 1930 with sung commercials, and that when advertising on state-owned stations was banned four years later he opened his own station, Radio-Cité. French Wikipedia dates the purchase of the station, previously Radio LL, to 1935. The magazine says the agency was closed during the Second World War, when Radio-Cité was requisitioned.

The founder’s surname changed with the war. HEC Stories says Bleustein joined the Resistance under the code name Blanchet and later added it to his official name under a 1954 decree, which is why the company’s founder appears in its history as Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet. He relaunched Publicis after the war under that name, French Wikipedia says.

A head office at the top of the Champs-Élysées.

The group’s address became part of its identity. HEC Stories says Bleustein-Blanchet set up the headquarters of Publicis in the former Hotel Astoria on the Champs-Élysées, and French Wikipedia gives the move as 1958 and the address as 133 avenue des Champs-Élysées. The building sits at the Place de l’Étoile end of the avenue, Wallpaper* said in a guide by Warren Singh-Bartlett published on 28 June 2017.

On the same site the agency opened a shop. Wallpaper* called the Drugstore Publicis a Parisian staple since 1958 and said it was the brainchild of Bleustein-Blanchet, who drew on similar venues he had frequented as a young Madison Avenue advertising executive. It combined a restaurant, a shop, a cinema and a bar, the magazine said, and French Wikipedia says it kept very late opening hours for the period. The same article says the format was taken from a concept the founder had observed in the United States, and that it was aimed at young people and well-known names, with a bar, restaurant, tobacconist, perfumery, pharmacy and kiosk under one roof.

The Drugstore put the agency’s name on a shopfront, under the same roof as its offices. French Wikipedia says a second Publicis drugstore opened in 1965 on the boulevard Saint-Germain, so the name appeared on two Paris streets as a place to shop, eat and meet as well as the signature of an advertising firm.

The building has been reworked more than once. Wallpaper* credited the present structure to the architect Pierre Dufau. Time Out Paris, in a listing dated 10 January 2012, said the Drugstore Publicis had been clad with neon swirls by the architect Michele Saee following a renovation in 2004, with a glass-and-steel café stretching out on to the pavement and a newsagent, pharmacy, bookshop and delicatessen on the ground floor. Wallpaper* described a later makeover of the restaurant, now called Le Drugstore, by the British designer Tom Dixon, using glossy wood and marble with leather, velvet and brushed brass.

The agency’s own campaigns are part of the same history. HEC Stories recalls the agency’s slogans “Du pin, du vin, du Boursin” and “C’est Shell que j’aime”, and says it was in the 1960s that the Dimanche stocking brand was shortened to DIM. Those lines were written for clients, and the magazine places them in the same account as the Drugstore and the move to the Champs-Élysées.

A word, a lion and an avenue.

Advertising-agency identities are built from unusual raw material. Many agency names began as the surnames of their founders, set side by side or shortened to a run of initials, and over time those initials can become a wordmark that few people read as names at all. Above the agency brands sit holding-company names, which tend to be shorter, more abstract and designed to work on annual reports, stock listings and conference stages rather than on client work.

Because an agency sells ideas rather than packaged goods, its brand surfaces are unusual too. The lobby and reception area act as a shop window for visiting clients and job candidates. House symbols, small objects or colours associated with a founder, can turn up on desks, award shelves and merchandise. Pitch decks, credentials documents and case-study reels carry the identity into rooms the agency does not own, so the type, colour and layout rules have to survive being projected, printed and shared as files.

For a designer, the useful lesson is how a business-to-business identity balances heritage, signalled by founders’ names and dates, against the need to look current to the next client in the room.

Three leaders and a lion on new doors.

Leadership has passed through a short line of names. French Wikipedia says Maurice Lévy became directeur général in 1975. The Drum reported on 26 January 2017, in an article by Minda Smiley, that Arthur Sadoun, head of Publicis Communications since 2015, would replace Lévy as chairman and chief executive of Publicis Groupe on 1 June that year, and that Lévy would become chairman of the supervisory board. The Drum named Élisabeth Badinter as chair of the supervisory board at the time of the announcement; English Wikipedia identifies her as Bleustein-Blanchet’s daughter.

Over the same decades the Publicis name sat above a growing set of agencies that kept their own identities. French Wikipedia says Publicis announced the purchase of the British agency Saatchi & Saatchi in June 2000, and English Wikipedia says the group acquired Bcom3, the holding company of Leo Burnett, in September 2002. French Wikipedia records that Publicis and Omnicom announced a planned merger on 28 July 2013 and abandoned it on 9 May 2014, after which the two groups remained separate companies.

The group also put its own name on events. English Wikipedia says Publicis has co-organised the technology conference Viva Technology in Paris with Groupe Les Echos since 2016, and that in 2018 it introduced Marcel, an internal platform built with Microsoft and named after the founder.

The lion moved forward in January 2025. B&T, in a report by Tom Fogden on 15 January 2025, said Publicis Groupe would merge Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide to form a network called Leo, and that the new Leo logo included both the “Leo” name and the Publicis lion. Reel Chicago, in a column by Colin Costello on 14 January 2025, summed up the change for the Chicago agency as “Goodbye, apples. Hello, lions.” Carla Serrano, the group’s chief strategy officer, was quoted by B&T describing Publicis as “the global group brand we all rally to”.

That move links the 1926 emblem to a Chicago agency founded in 1935. A lion chosen by a young Paris advertiser as his sign now stands beside the forename of an American founder, while the Champs-Élysées address and the Drugstore continue to carry the Publicis word in the city where it was coined.

For a design guide, Publicis Groupe shows how a coined word and a single emblem can carry a company for a century, from a flat on the rue du Faubourg-Montmartre to a shopfront on the Champs-Élysées and the logo of a merged network. Compare Leo Burnett, the Chicago agency the group has owned since 2002, and Omnicom, the group it planned to merge with in 2013. For this guide we use mane gold, Étoile ink and night with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Publicis Groupe’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.