Julien Gautier : “My role is to enhance our clients’ media visibility by writing editorial-style content.”

What is your role at Fargo-Sachinka agency ?

I support the agency’s clients in meeting their editorial needs. As the agency’s Editorial Director, I design and propose content formats tailored to our clients’ specific requirements and aligned with the communication strategy defined with them beforehand. Whether it involves writing opinion pieces for the press, blog articles or content for white papers, video scripts, or conference summaries, the objective is always the same: to identify and create the most relevant and appropriate format in order to maximise our clients’ media visibility.

By offering tailored, editorial-style content, my role is to help clients highlight their expertise and their vision of their respective markets. Alongside the interviews with journalists that we help clients secure and prepare for, they need to clearly define the message they wish to convey in the media, the audience they aim to reach, and so on, so that we can provide them with turnkey content designed for editorial teams and, by extension, their readership.

Passionate about economic and political affairs, I particularly enjoy writing content on behalf of our clients—or under my own byline for certain professional media outlets—as well as speaking at conferences on the importance of media relations and the risks associated with them.

In addition, we have developed a unique media-training offer for the agency’s clients. I have the pleasure of leading these half-day sessions in collaboration with a former TV and radio journalist who specialises in this type of exercise, whom I regularly work with to provide our clients with a truly 360-degree approach.

As a communications consultancy, our role is to promote our clients’ media visibility. To ensure that all of our clients’ appearances on television, radio or online platforms (video, podcasts, etc.) are successful—or at least to maximise the chances that they are, as live broadcasts can be unpredictable—these interventions are carefully prepared and rehearsed in advance. Even for the most accomplished professionals in their field, media training is an essential exercise.

In a few words, what was your background before joining Fargo & Sachinka ?

After completing a university degree in economics and two years at journalism school, I joined a news agency where I was responsible for covering economic news for several regional daily newspapers. I then moved on to a leading financial news website, where I had the opportunity to interview a wide range of figures, including executives from CAC 40 companies as well as small and mid-cap firms, economists, and other key stakeholders.

Since 2015, I have been working at Fargo, an agency run by several former journalists and distinguished by its editorial-driven approach to media relations. It represented an opportunity to grow professionally by putting my writing skills at the service of financial players seeking high-quality editorial content. This is what motivated my decision to join the agency ten years ago.

How do you view the evolution of the financial players you follow most closely, such as asset management companies and private banks ?

The financial sector has been through numerous crises over the past 25 years, and the pace has clearly accelerated. I particularly remember an economist at a Paris-based asset management firm whom I was interviewing in the autumn of 2008 telling me over the phone that he had never seen anything like it. And for good reason: we were living through history in real time—the most severe financial crisis since 1929. This highly respected professional was unable to formulate any meaningful analysis of such an unprecedented situation and eventually asked me to call him back the following day, giving himself time to regain his composure. This anecdote says a lot about the levels of stress generated by major crises, which have certainly not been lacking, from the subprime crisis to the eurozone crisis, not to mention the Covid-related market crash in 2020.

More broadly, the financial sector emerged from the 2008 crisis with a severely damaged public image. During the 2010s, and no doubt in an effort to ‘restore their reputation’, communication increasingly focused on green finance and environmental issues. To such an extent that some players ended up blurring their message, flirting with greenwashing. The intention was undeniably commendable, given the reality of climate change and the collective need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Provided, however, that social and governance issues—the S and G in ESG—are not overlooked, and that global economic realities are analysed beyond conventional narratives, something I have occasionally observed to be missing.

Today, new themes have emerged and are becoming unavoidable. Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, Europeans in particular have had to step up their defence efforts. Issues of sovereignty and strategic autonomy therefore require well-calibrated and relevant public discourse. Similarly, regulatory inflation and the ‘democratisation’ of certain asset classes—such as private equity and private debt—are forcing financial players to intensify their educational efforts and develop more targeted communication aimed at retail investors. On all of these new issues, which come with significant media stakes, our agency offers recognised and unquestionable expertise that we put at the service of our clients.