Paris, 1835.

Havas is a surname. English Wikipedia says the original Havas was a news agency created in 1835 by Charles-Louis Havas in Paris, and that the modern advertising group takes its name from that business. The same page says the news agency was incorporated as a société anonyme in 1879, and that in 1920 Havas merged with the Société Générale des Annonces, which made it a manager of advertising space in the press, later extended to radio and cinema. Its timeline adds that the company moved into billboards in 1923.

For much of its life the name covered two trades at once: gathering news and selling the space around it. Wikipedia records how the two separated. In 1940, it says, the Havas news agency was taken over by the Vichy government and renamed the Office français d’information, and in 1945 the news service became Agence France-Presse. The advertising side kept the founder’s surname.

The group that carries the name today was built on that advertising business. Wikipedia says that by 1968 Havas had become a diversified group whose media interests were placed in a société anonyme called Havas Conseil, which split in 1975 into five parts that merged again as Eurocom, a holding company for communications subsidiaries. Havas was listed on the Paris Bourse in 1982, and in 1987, the page says, it went through privatisation as part of a national denationalisation campaign.

In 1991, according to Wikipedia, Eurocom acquired the French advertising group RSCG, and the combination produced the Euro RSCG Worldwide network. Five years later, in 1996, Eurocom changed its own name to Havas Advertising and organised itself into four operating divisions: Euro RSCG, Campus, Diversified Agencies and Médiapolis. After two decades under other names, the founder’s surname had returned to the company’s own name.

Losing the name, then buying it back.

For a few years the Havas name sat with two companies at once. Wikipedia says that in 1998 Compagnie Générale des Eaux, led by Jean-Marie Messier, renamed itself Vivendi and acquired both Havas S.A. and Havas Advertising. Vivendi then began to retire the name: on 11 December 2000, the page says, Havas S.A. became Vivendi Universal Publishing.

The advertising company took the opposite course. Wikipedia says Vivendi sold its remaining stake in Havas Advertising to institutional investors in 2001, and that Havas Advertising announced plans to acquire the Havas name from Vivendi and to rename itself simply Havas. Both decisions took effect at the annual shareholders’ meeting of 23 May 2002. The infobox lists the company as Havas SA from 2002 until 2024.

The Bolloré family entered the story soon afterwards. Wikipedia says the Bolloré Group began acquiring a stake in Havas in July 2004, took control in 2005, and that on 12 July 2005 Havas named Vincent Bolloré as board chairman. Twelve years later the ownership moved to Vivendi. Advanced Television reported on 7 June 2017 that Vivendi had entered into a purchase agreement with the Bolloré Group for its majority stake in Havas, following an indicative offer made on 11 May, with completion subject to the approval of competition authorities. It said Vivendi’s management board had signed the agreement after receiving positive opinions from employee representative bodies at Vivendi, Havas and the Bolloré Group and after completing its due diligence. The report quoted Yannick Bolloré as chief executive of Havas Group and Arnaud de Puyfontaine as chief executive of Vivendi. Vivendi owned Havas from 2017 until 2024, according to Wikipedia.

The next change separated the two again. B&T reported on 11 December 2024 that Vivendi shareholders had voted to break up the group, and that Havas, whose agencies it listed as including Havas Media, Havas Host, Red Havas and Havas Play, would list on Euronext Amsterdam from 16 December. The magazine said the Havas prospectus described a smaller and less diversified group than it had been under Vivendi.

Initials, lobbies and decks.

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.

A Dutch company with a Paris head office.

The listing changed the legal form of the name. Wikipedia gives the company as Havas N.V., a naamloze vennootschap, the Dutch form of public company, with its registered office and head office in Puteaux, in the business district west of Paris. It says the shares began trading on Euronext Amsterdam on 16 December 2024 after the spin-off from Vivendi, and it lists Yannick Bolloré as chairman and chief executive. The infobox gives the Bolloré group as parent from 2004 to 2017 and again from 2024, with Vivendi in between.

Wikipedia describes the group as organised into three operating divisions, among them Havas Media Group and Havas Creative Group, alongside Havas Health & You. In each case the founder’s surname leads and a plain word describes the trade after it. The same page records acquisitions made under the name in recent years, including the UK digital agency Search Laboratory in April 2022 and the Paris data consultancy TED Consulting in April 2024.

The building most associated with the early name is a Paris one. Wikipedia illustrates the company with a building on the rue de Richelieu, built by the Société Générale des Annonces and used by Havas from 1921 as the head office of its advertising operations.

For a design guide, Havas shows how a single surname can pass through news, advertising, a series of corporate names and a change of stock exchange and still sit at the front of the group. Compare Publicis, another Paris advertising group, and WPP, a holding company whose name began as an abbreviation. For this guide we use brass, claret and ink with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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