WorldCity Business Magazine
The Language of Love and Ads
by WC
The second-largest billboard company in the world, from France, oversees Latam from Miami.
From the 19th Century posters of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec onward, the French have built a reputation in advertising.
So it is little surprise that the country is home to a business that claims to dominate Europes billboards and the worlds street furniture, including kiosks, newsstands and public toilets.
In 1964, JC Decaux Out-of-Home Group began operations in Lyon and has since moved its headquarters to Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. The JC stands for Jean-Claude, the founders first name.
Today, the company controls more than 657,000 advertising panels across 45 countries and employs almost 8,000 people. Only Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings controls more advertising space.
Eleven years ago, the company opened its Latin American headquarters in Miami under the JC Decaux (deck-oh) North America flag and it maintains an office here that employs nine people.
The Latin American headquarters in Miami complements operations in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.K. and Uruguay as well as other offices in the United States and France.
There is no respite from the company’s messages. It manages three divisions: billboards, street furniture and transportation.
Novel venues for advertising include automatic outdoor toilets, multi-service columns, city light panels, public trash cans, public benches, streetlights and recycling bins .
Billboards include scrolling panels and illuminated billboards. Transportation covers advertising in public transport systems including airports, metros, buses, tramways and trains.
The aggressive advertising assault has paid off.
Revenues for 2006 were almost $2 billion, according to Wright Investors’ Service and founder Jean-Claude Decaux, born in 1938, is France’s 10th wealthiest person, according to a survey conducted by the French weekly publication Challenges. The magazine estimated Decauxs worth at $4.3 billion.
As an indicator of clout, the businessman whose sons JC Jr., Jean-Charles, and JF, Jean-Franois, manage the company is surpassed in wealth only by families behind Frances biggest brands, Hermes, LOreal because theyre worth it and Peugeot.
The Arnault family which owns LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) is the richest in France, the report says, with a fortune in excess of $20 billion.
In last year’s rich list, Forbes recorded Decaux as the world’s 155th wealthiest man, just behind computing impresario Ross Perot and several spots ahead of Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani, with a paltry $4.1 billion fortune.
Fittingly, JC Decaux’s latest collaboration is with the world’s richest man Bill Gates or at least his software empire, Microsoft.
The company has installed the largest branding initiative at Terminal 9 in New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
AmericanAirlines’ newest and largest hub is now home to a complete digital showcase that dominates the tunnel connecting travelers from the gates to ticketing and baggage claim.
Travelers can view banners above escalators as they descend into the
passage. Once underground, there are 70-inch digital screens on both sides of the moving walkways. There are 40 screens, 20 on each wall, integrated with a synchronized moving digital content – a 21st century twist on the stylized posters of French artist Toulouse-Lautrec. WC