The boss is a DJ

Why and how do you integrate this passion in an already intense professional context?

It was a very frustrating moment. Then I stopped practicing completely when I created the agency with Stéphane a few years ago. The idea of ​​coming back to it later, when the adventure ends, has finally become an illusion because responsibilities in life never diminish. We always have a good excuse to put aside our side projects.

Today, I am proud of the agency’s journey and the expertise of my employees. It gives me a confidence and a serenity which allows me to reinstate more serenely projects, passions which had remained frozen, away from me for a long time.

It’s above all psychological. No one should give up on work because they just drown the pressure in a few pints on Thursday night. It is important to be multiple, especially if you are a creative, in an agency or elsewhere. I admire personalities who live only through excellence in expertise, such as master sushi for example, but it is not me.

For this reason, I set myself the goal, for one year, of creating a mix per month (musical selection of approximately 1 hour) and I am happy to share it with my friends, collaborators and networks.

And this passion for electronic music?

Electronic dance music is a real universe parallel to all other musical genres. There’s bound to be one you like, even if you don’t know it. There are as many electronic musics as genres or musical tastes. Instrumentation, tempo, the palette is extremely wide, from the softest and most spiritual to soaring trances, passing through the groove of the brass or the destructured harmonies of the synthesizers. Those who pretend not to like this genre often refer to the (wrong) clichés of industrial techno, at 145 BPM played in a hangar.

The common point is the beat! Like a heartbeat, the common thread, which links the songs together, then the DJs who evolve the story and finally the audience. The possibilities and emotions are endless. The essence of electronic music is sharing. Here, stars and top charts are less essential. You can spend several exceptional hours at a public event without even having seen the DJ’s face or name, or even knowing a single song from his selection. It’s the shortest path to our emotions.

What is the place of music in communication today?

It is known, in some cases, that the sound plays for 70% in the emotion. Emotion is itself a key factor in buy-in and can lead to buying. However, with regard to budgets, and in the creative process of the digital generation, the soundtrack always acts too much as an interchangeable accessory. While it was often difficult to make its importance heard, in budgets, but also sometimes within its own teams, the trend turned to disaster. Today we consider that sound is no longer activated by default. We end up with square formats, phones, viewed for maximum 4 seconds. As a brand, if you follow the masses, if you think that your investments should be made in this way, to the detriment of creation, then do not hope to emerge.

Fortunately there are still brands who want to differentiate themselves and who wonder, with a minimum of vision, how to capture attention today to take people into their universe rather than drowning in a silent thread.

And in Sweet Punk’s projects?

Music takes pride of place as soon as possible. When I created the agency, I dreamed of combining two of my obsessions with adventure: travel and music. For the first, Société Générale, our historic client, followed us on project ideas involving filming in Istanbul, Rio or even Hong Kong. Regarding music, she was the ally of our most inspiring projects. We have sometimes collaborated with real artists and the craziest project remains that carried out for the 40th anniversary of the Ariane rocket. We managed to propose and materialize a real electro album with the artist Pyramid. A powerful idea to attach the brand to the general public, but also a nice gift from internal communication to the 9000 employees who shared among others: t-shirts, vinyls, posters etc … And an idea dubbed directly by the CEO of the group, proof of the unifying power and energy that music provides.

Let’s dance!