Havas Group’s annual press update from the Havas Café in Cannes, during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, outlined a new strategic direction for the holding company.
Yannick Bolloré, Chairman & CEO of Havas Group and Chairman of Vivendi, said the Group’s new strategic direction and a new common mission was make a meaningful difference to brands, businesses and people.
Based on its proprietary study which analyses the shift in consumers’ expectations across the world, Havas has designed a new roadmap to help brands address the fast-growing demand for meaningful purpose and content.
The Group has identified four key competitive advantages to ensure the success of this new positioning and maintain its position as the most integrated group in the industry:
• A new common business methodology designed to make brands meaningful, that is being implemented across Havas’ Creative, Media and Health businesses.
• The Group’s talent strategy will focus on continuing to evolve talent programs and initiatives that enable Havas to be the most meaningful place to work.
• Havas’ integrated Village model that will continue to provide marketers with seamless and agile business solutions.
• The power of Vivendi, that gives Havas an “unmatched access to meaningful content” and will continue to be a driving force of the Group.
To support this ambition of content, Mr Bolloré also talked about the further development of the Annex, Havas-Vivendi’s shared fast-growing network designed to help brands tap into digital and millennial culture. This expansion is made through the acquisition of LA-based Battery and the launch of Annex Bastille, where cultural influencers from Havas and from the broader Vivendi environment will bring their expertise to brands. Battery is a culture-driven creative agency based with a specialized focus on gaming, television, movies and streaming TV services.
“Our Together strategy transformed our Group and enabled us to create more than 60 Villages all over the world, making us the most integrated group in our industry. Togetherness will remain at the heart of everything we do but it is now the right time for us to set ourselves a new ambition: make a meaningful difference to brands, businesses and people. The primary focus of everyone at Havas is to create meaningful brands because meaningful brands are better for business and for the world we live in,” said Mr Bolloré.
As part of this new strategic plan, Mr Bolloré also underlined the need for Havas to set the example by being a meaningful group itself, and informed of a series of new commitments, starting with gender equality, workplace harassment training and environmental responsibility.
