The Way We See It: Fred & Farid

Frédéric Raillard, 42, and Farid Mokart, 46, are co-founders of Fred & Farid, with branches in Paris and Shanghai. They have worked together for 18 years on brands such as Wrangler, Xbox and Orange. They talk to Diana Goodman about feng shui, racism and being motivated by a fear of death

How would you describe yourselves?

Fred: I would say contradictions, tensions, passions. An unstable multiple personality in motion. A craving for inside peace.

Farid: I am a woman stuck in the body of a vegetarian, music-mad lumberjack.

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Fred: A different person every day.Farid I see my father, only stupider but more handsome – especially without the extra weight.

How did you get on with your parents?

Fred: I had a bad relationship with my father and a cold and distant mother. My mother was a secretary and my father was a salesman for department stores.

Farid: My parents were illiterate, communicating with the love that they felt for us in a beautiful manner. They were very emotional. They sacrificed everything for us. In return, we wanted to earn their respect. Paradoxically, and in a contradictory fashion, we four children were proud of our parents at a very early age. We were proud of the blind faith that they showed in us.

How did they get on with each other?

FRED: An apparently flawless relationship – until sudden divorce.

FARID: They experienced a 40-year love story, together, side-by-side. Emigrating together from Algeria, they built a new life in a country whose language and customs were alien to them. Both of them were in a type of emotional Bluetooth state, giving absolutely everything to their little family cell. Even if wealth was not on the cards, they enriched us with their love. 

What sort of education did you have?

FRED: Strict and Catholic.

FARID: A responsible one, with a heightened awareness of justice. Being first-generation immigrants, the children of illiterate parents, we had only one value: respect. We wanted to be respected due to the many sacrifices made by our parents. Standing up to anyone in order to treat us as equal. Hence the out-and-out revulsion I have for injustice. 

When you were teased at school, what was it about?

FRED: I was into drawing and all the artists were like my heroes – the people I admired. There’s such respect for artists in France, but I was a bad student – the kind of guy who sat in the last row of the class and when people were doing mathematics, I was drawing.

FARID: France has a very strong racist tradition, 64 percent of French people think it’s normal to harbour racist feelings. I was teased at school in regards to my origins, my dark skin and my name. I lived knowing that I needed to prove that I was intellectually more French than the French. I grew up having to cope with being mocked and forged an armour around me, strengthening myself with this hatred. Today, I tell all these closed-minded pricks to piss off. 

Did you ever feel that you would rather leave France?

FARID: No, not at all. I’m French – I was born and I grew up in France and I feel 100 per cent French. But it’s always the same thing in any country when there is a big wave of immigration, people are scared.

What was the first-ever advertisement to make an impression on you?

FRED: For sure, all the Jean-Paul Goude ads. Egoiste, with the women at the windows shouting; Coco Chanel with Vanessa Paradis in a bird cage… It was all about strong imagination, strong pictures, and he really tattooed images on our hearts and our brains. He had such a free mind. He was criticised in France for the wrong reasons [for his book Jungle Fever]. But French people, they like to kill kings and one day or another people will chop off your head – that’s the French way.

FARID: Joe Strummer with his anti-Nazi League T-shirt in the film Rude Boy. The power of words summarising an emotion in a clear and synthetic manner of thought.

How did you get into advertising?

FRED: The love of ideas.

FARID: By accident. I was studying to be a teacher and I saw a job offer and decided to go see. I really didn’t give a fuck about it, but it went very well and I started as an account manager and Fred was a planner. The chemistry between us was great so I decided to stay.

Why did you decide to launch Fred & Farid?

FRED: Our group was born from our need of freedom and independence.

FARID: We felt that we had to choose between comfort, money, compromise and – on the other side – the sweet sensation of being free. People tried to push us into thinking that advertising was an industry – thought out in advance and rational. An agency should be managed by creatives, with all the brains and talents working to assist the idea.

What do you regard as your most memorable work?

FRED: Xbox Champagne, ‘Life is Short, Play More’, which was William Shakespeare’s The Seven Ages of Man reinvented. It went viral before virality.

FARID: [Our best work] is the relationship we have together – our encounters, the talents that join us, and this collective culture that surrounds us daily. We are not two, but a community of talents growing up together. It is like constant childbirth, a common act of creativity on the scale of a structure. It’s a unique emotion; organic, chaotic and pleasurable.

What makes your work distinctive?

FRED: The subversive meaning hidden behind it. Sometimes.

FARID: We don’t know if our work is distinctive. We don’t want to think in those terms. Our job is at the crossroads of the art business. We believe that ideas create an emotional value, and that wealth and business are simply consequences. Our clients end up by sharing this conviction, taking this path with us.

How did you decide who would go to Shanghai and who would stay in Paris?

FRED: Your brain is a great tool to choose your washing machine. But never use it for your life’s big decisions. Going to Shanghai was a purely instinctive and impulsive emotional decision.

FARID: Fred needs to be where the sun rises. And I am happy if he is happy.

How has that worked out?

FRED: It works beyond our expectations. In six months, the agency won nine accounts, including Porsche China. The agency counts 51 permanent people, 45 of whom are from mainland China. Being in Shanghai opens up the brains, the hearts and the perspectives of the 300 employees of our group. It’s so stimulating and exciting – I think it must be like New York was in the 60s in terms of the energy.

You’ve worked together a long time, how often are there tensions in your relationship?FRED Seriously, every day.

FARID: All the time in the beginning, as it’s part of the very fabric of all early relationships. Today, we tell each other things in ways that don’t annoy each other.

Tell us about the Wrangler We Are Animals campaign.

FRED: Winning a Cannes Grand Prix was a blessing. It proved once again that brands should sponsor interesting pieces of thinking, instead of annoying the audience with boring products.

FARID: The campaign has a lot of us in it. It’s more than a campaign, beyond the Grand Prix.

How difficult was it to shoot?

FRED: We spent two nights in nature in New Jersey, with Ryan McGinley and 12 models. It was freezing – like in the North Pole – and our 12 models were naked. They almost died. It went crazy and sexual like a weird Celtic ceremony.

FARID: It was as agreeable or unpleasant as nature can be.

Why did you decide to move away from the Wrangler Western theme?

FRED: Because the cowboy cliché meant Dallas, Georges Bush, the American Indian genocide, Marlboro, rodeo, John Wayne, the white American culture. The new European generation couldn’t positively relate to that.

What about the Robbie Williams Rock DJ music video? Were you surprised by the strong reactions it provoked?

FRED: It was a scientific experiment [that explored] cultural differences around the planet. Broadcasting it was fine in the UK and France, but only after 10pm. It was forbidden by the government in the Dominican Republic for Satanism. It was fine in the USA for the blood part, but we had to lose Robbie’s half a second of miming a blowjob. And it was absolutely fine for every kind of audience in Japan.

FARID: Our story changed people’s perception of Robbie from a singer in a teenage boy band for girlies, to an out-and-out pop rock artist. We approached him as a brand with an image problem that had to be fixed. Not one of his subsequent videos had the same impact.

What has been your worst experience in advertising?

FRED: Maurice Levy [CEO, Publicis].

FARID: If we had to give it a nickname, it would have to be called ‘Maurice’.

How much TV do you watch outside work?

FRED: None. I’m so into the internet and buying American series and watching them, that it feels painful to me to follow the programme on TV. Also, TV advertising is boring.

FARID: I sleep four hours a night, so I have time to watch two hours of TV and surf the web for three hours in the second half of the night.

How would you describe national differences in advertising? 

FRED: Europe is brand centric. America is consumer centric. Asia is money centric.

FARID: The BRIC countries and the rest of the world. For a long time we were thinking that in advertising there is Europe and then the United States. But for the last six or seven years there has been another way to see it. In China, everyone is doing advertising through social media – because of the huge size of the population and because the Chinese have perfectly managed the technology. Soon it’s going to be the model for storytelling.

As a consumer, how do you react to advertising?

FRED: It’s constant brain harassment. It’s Hitchcock’s Birds 24/7, 365.

FARID: My vision is distorted through my profession. I only remember things that are bold, emotionally beautiful and intelligent – even if that represents only three per cent of the workload. All you have to do is make me enthusiastic.

Whom do you most admire? And despise?

FARID: Most admired: John Hegarty. He remains the person who has influenced us the most. You learn by simply observing and listening to him. Much of his advice is timeless. Most despised? All the arseholes who believe that we buy talent, who have an accountant’s approach to creativity, and who have an accountant’s approach to the agencies they manage.

What do you think of awards? And Cannes?

FRED: It takes too much time. It costs too much money. Most of the winners cheat at some point, with special versions, format, inscriptions in all categories, fake results, friends in the jury... But it’s like [using] EPO in Le Tour de France you have to embrace the system or your team will lose. Also, winning a Grand Prix is an orgasm.

What do you look for as a judge?

FRED: Meaning.

FARID: A fair process. Without politics, without alliances, without compromise, without cheating. Debating ideas on their intelligence and feasibility alone.

What’s the best advertisement you’ve ever seen?

FRED: The Independent Litany, ‘Don’t buy. Don’t read’. Directed by Rob Sanders.

FARID: Guinness Surfer – because it was totally unexpected. They took a reference from a Blake painting and put it in popular culture. The starting point was rational, but what they did with it was emotional and totally unexpected. It changed the Bernbach model of advertising; it was a tipping point. 

To what extent is it necessary to believe in the product you’re working on?

FRED: It’s not necessary. Products are just an alibi to support interesting pieces of thinking. The product only defines a zone of legitimacy for the message.

FARID: It’s a duty, or else it’s called prostitution. Never say “a dick is a dick”. The brands need to make us believe in their product, or we need to be convinced about it, in order to work on it.

Are there any products you would never work on?

FRED: Nuclear.

FARID: Tobacco, weapons industry, army, nuclear energy, religion.

Do you feel that there is a stigma attached to working in advertising?

FRED: Yes, the insane need for recognition. People are forced to look at your work; they can’t escape. In some ways, I became an adman to force my family to look at my kid’s drawings.

FARID: Probably. However, advertising in 2013 has nothing to do with that of the end of last century. We entered the industry in times of crisis and we haven’t experienced the crazy money/golden years. Cynicism is what we hate the most, it carries the legitimate genes of advertising rejection. Passion is what motivates us – and what, millimetre by millimetre, makes us move forward.

Are you ever ashamed at the amount of money that is spent/earned in the industry?

FRED: No, I feel excited by it.

FARID: We are not selling weapons, nor are we in the nuclear industry. These industries spend crazy amounts of money and are harmful. Advertising is only the tip of an iceberg that finances a number of other industries, including media. It is a stimulus, a click, nothing more.

How important is money to you?

FRED: We never, ever, made a move for money. Money has never been our motivation.

FARID: Money is not important, it’s what you make of it that is. It is normal that ideas are highly priced; they create value, engagement and conversation for brands. We live from our brands and they allow us to finance projects.

How is your agency embracing the rapid changes in new technology?

FRED: We develop cross-media campaigns, social media, augmented reality, ePR, eBuzzing, apps, stunts, emosite… They open new playgrounds for the creative teams.

FARID: Like children in a toy store. It extends the creative possibilities. We use it much like special effects in movies, without ever letting the effects take the upper hand in regards to storytelling.

Have you ever had therapy?

FRED: Yes. 

FARID: Not yet. That’s the benefit of working with your best friend, with whom you’ve been through the best and worst periods. We both show our naked souls to each other; we are each a therapist for the other. Certainly not the best therapist, but after 20 years the balance is necessarily positive.

Have drink or drugs ever been a problem for you?

FARID: Drugs have never been a problem because we’re not attracted to them. We hate losing control. We don’t need drugs or alcohol to find an idea; it takes purity away from it.

How well do you take criticism?

FRED: It depends on who is criticising. If I respect the person, I take the criticism very well. If not, then I don’t.

FARID: Most of the time, we don’t care at all. We’re so critical among ourselves that it’s rare that we happen to be disappointed by criticism.

How would your enemies describe you?

FRED: Violent. Shocking. Disrespectful.

FARID: With what they think are flaws. When we first launched Fred & Farid, the management of the group we had just left kept going to every dinner in town, influencing media and clients to make sure we’d have a rough start. They kept on belittling us, thinking the agency needed to be nipped in the bud. By doing that, they created envy among the key opinion leaders and actually participated in the growth of our business.

How do you judge a person?

FRED: In the first second, through instinct, intuition, energy, aura.

FARID: By his/her values.

When did you last cry?

FRED: I can get emotional when I talk about Huang Feng, my partner in Shanghai. He is a beautiful person. His elegance in life touches me.

FARID: On 6 February, the anniversary of my father’s death. It’s been nine years and I can’t think about him without suffering. 

What are your principal interests outside work?

FRED: Gardening. Spiritual readings.

FARID: Fred and I are both family guys and are living a happy life because we create the right balance between the work and the family. We push people who work for us to have this same balance. Of course, the young ones don’t give a fuck – they just want to work and party, and that’s fine. But when you start being parents it changes a bit.

Where do you stand politically?

FRED: In the centre. And for ecology. Extreme positions have proved to be sources of grief, both left and right.

FARID: We are democrats; we are left-wing.

What does your nationality mean to you?

FRED: I am proud to be French. We are special. We smell good.

FARID: It’s important because it’s a marker for one’s whole personality. But to be honest, if you look at the world right now it would be better if we didn’t give a fuck about nationality. Economically and politically it makes less and less sense, and culturally we consume an international culture though which you can be emotionally touched by any kind of element coming from anywhere. The idea of nation is a starting point, but not an ending point.

What is the greatest human invention?

FRED: Nuclear. It will soon force humanity to be more spiritual.

FARID: Words. 

What is your greatest weakness?

FRED: I can easily be influenced, charmed, bewitched, hypnotised.

FARID: People I love.

And your greatest strength?

FRED: Movement. I’m always changing… Even my opinions are never fixed in time. That’s why I love China. Chinese feng shui is all about wind and water constantly moving and evolving. I feel very comfortable with that.

FARID: Again, people I love. Les gens que j’aime.

What makes you really angry?

FRED: Corrupt politicians.

FARID: Injustice. And attempts to divide us – me and Fred – as if we didn’t communicate. 

What is your view of marriage?

FRED: It is sacred. I hope to get old with my wife and to die with her at 99 years old in Provence.

FARID: I am more concerned with a true commitment. We got married because we wanted to do it and it’s fine for us, but the commitment is the real idea of marriage. It’s not a paper, or a ring, or a speech from the priest.

Do you believe in God?

FRED: Yes… Even though I don’t really know what it means.

FARID: I don’t know. I’m definitely more sensitive to what Descartes called the great watchmaker, but not to the point of following a dogma and to depend on a church. We all have a great need for spirituality, but I apprehend it rather in family ties, or in searching to understand the motivations of others.

Are you afraid of dying?

FRED: Not any more. I had a kind of therapy and now I’m completely not afraid of death. I used to be scared of planes, for instance, but now I can take a plane anywhere.

FARID: My bad sleeping habits come from my fear of death. I think we are both so afraid of death that we use it as an engine to multiply our energy and to develop as many exciting projects as we can. We’re in a constant quest to fill the void, and all of this finds its origins in fear of death.

Where do you want to be buried?

FRED: I want to be incinerated. I love this in the Indian culture. Fire purifies, and helps your soul leave your body. Also, corpses stink.

FARID: I haven’t made my choice yet between burial and cremation. The chosen modus operandi will determine the location.

If I could relive my life…

FRED: I would spend more time with my grandmother.

FARID: I would meet Fred and my wife much earlier, and I would raise my middle finger to my fear of death and fill my life with things I like. 

What, in the end, really matters?

FRED: Beauty.

FARID :The same as for any good communication: [what you] take away and looking back at what’s been achieved. We hope we’ll be able to answer that question as late as possible.