2023-05-30 06:00:12
He is one of the 22,000 French personalities to appear in the very select Who’s Who. But at 58, the entrepreneur Franck Papazian is also now the boss. He succeeds Antoine Hébrard, who died suddenly on March 13. “Long before his death, Antoine trusted me to wake up the red book, a sleeping beauty that has the potential to become the network of networks,” he says.
The 70th anniversary of this worldly directory, in October, will give the signal for revival. Dinners, events, debates, photo studio, “master class” … it’s a real brand strategy that should be deployed in stride. “An Antoine-Hébrard literary prize will also see the light of day, I really want it,” promises Franck Papazian.
“CB News”, “Strategies” and “Le Journal du luxe”
By buying the Who’s Who and its 5,000 copies a year, the businessman brings a new brick to the specialized press group he has built up since 2017 through successive takeovers. With “CB News”, the communication monthly founded by Christian Blachas, first, but also “Pub in Belgium” or the magazine “Strategies” and “Le Journal du luxe”. He is also a minority shareholder in the 100% Loopsider video media.
His next target? The monthly “Gala” that Prisma Media put on sale. He claims to want to “do everything possible to make a competitive offer” on one of the flagship titles of the people press (with a paid circulation of 127,000 copies).
About sixty sites in France and elsewhere
This appetite for acquisitions demonstrates a passion for the paper press. “At 15, I bought ‘Liberation’, ‘Le Matin de Paris’ and ‘Le Monde’ every day. All my pocket money went there”, likes to tell this son of a computer engineer and an accountant. But it was in a completely different field, private education, that he made his fortune.
By dint of acquisitions and the creation of establishments, Franck Papazian has built MediaSchool, a small empire of 15 schools specializing in communication, tourism and luxury, in particular. The whole has regarding sixty sites in 18 cities in France and abroad.
The story of an unconscious
Shortly before starting in 2002, this man was responsible for partnerships in the department of RTL following several years with the advertiser (Accor) or in an agency (at Publicis). He also gave lessons in a school of communication which, he felt at the time, was not sufficiently connected to the needs of the market. It was the trigger.
“MediaSchool is the story of an unconsciousness. Tell yourself that you can do better than large established groups. I fought to now reach more than 10,000 students in our establishments, ”summarizes the entrepreneur between two sips of Perrier mint.
“He is determined, simple and direct. Very creative, he has a vision, but is also able to execute it, ”says Robin Leproux, his former boss at RTL and ex-president of PSG, the two sharing a passion for football.
Without these qualities, it is impossible to bring out a higher education group with 73 million euros in turnover (2021) from scratch. Perhaps he had also learned the lessons of a failure: the failed launch of a publishing house when he was 28 years old.
The Armenia of his grandparents
Now he sells MediaSchool. The current vice-president of the group, Nicolas Bertrand, should take over the operational reins. Franck Papazian wants him “to move on, to live a new life”. That of the leader of a pole of influential media.
One constant remains, that of his commitment to Armenia, which his grandparents fled to escape the genocide. Co-president of the Coordinating Council of Armenian Organizations in France, this father of two children aged 28 and 25 spares no effort to warn of the critical situation of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Last year, he published “The Erdogan Regime, a threat to France”. A book light years away from the worldly directory. But, in his eyes, just as useful.
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