We interviewed Arnaud Dupuis-Castérès, president of Vae Solis CorporateFrench communications consultant and partner of Proa Comunicación, to explain how the agency works and how it tackles major challenges.
What is Vae Solis Corporate?
Vae Solis Corporate is a consultancy firm specialising in communication strategy and reputation capital. Our positioning is very clear: to support and advise managers independently on their image and reputation problems.
What is the origin of the company?
The company was created in 2002 and in 2007 we launched the Vae Solis Corporate brand. My initial desire was to create an independent consultancy with an original positioning: to be multidisciplinary, with a tailored approach and a team of senior professionals capable of advising the most senior executives of companies and institutions. Between holistic communications groups and small, highly specialised agencies, I wanted to build a medium-sized firm offering an alternative, strategically focused positioning with a conviction from the outset: reputation is one of our clients' most valuable assets. Therefore, it must be valued and protected.
What team does the consultancy currently have?
Vae Solís Corporate is a team of around 35 multidisciplinary consultants, with complementary profiles and extensive experience in the public, political and private sectors. The team is led by 10 directors and partners who manage the projects, two of which are based in Brussels.
What sectors or activities do your consultants come from?
We are a very diverse team with complementary profiles. Diversity is one of our core values. Some of our professionals have a background in communications, but most have other backgrounds: experience with ministers or parliamentarians and large companies. Others have been civil servants, bankers, journalists or lawyers. This diversity is very useful and greatly enriches our approach. This is one of the firm's main strengths.
What value proposition does the consultancy offer that differentiates it from its competitors?
Our approach is not that of a company operating in watertight departments (press relations, lobbying, digital communication, finance, etc. ....). Our vision and challenge is reputation management, how to create, improve and protect it. At our level and independently, there are very few players who have this vision and such a broad field of intervention. At Vae Solis Corporate, we do not "duplicate" our methods. We always develop a tailor-made strategic consultancy service, thanks to our team of professionals. Today, all the actors we address are perfectly permeable (public affairs, press relations, influencers, opinion leaders, academics, researchers, etc.). It is therefore essential to have a global and coherent strategic vision.
What is the profile of your clients and what sectors do they belong to?
We work with CAC 40 clients as well as startups and support many institutions and associations. We are fortunate to have many loyal clients with whom we have worked for many years and with whom we have built very close and trusting relationships. One of the firm's strengths is that it works for different sectors of activity (finance, infrastructure, agri-food, construction, telecommunications and healthcare, etc.). This diversity enriches the professionals and our ability to understand the main issues facing companies and institutions.
What is the service or practice most appreciated by your customers?
Vae Solis' strength is precisely its ability to take a global strategic view of reputation. For example, mastering crisis communication and risk prevention is often very useful and relevant in the development of a communication strategy. In addition, our responsiveness and ability to mobilise and react very quickly is highly appreciated by our clients. We can support our clients over long periods of time, as was the case with the "yellow waistcoats" social crisis, seven days a week, 24 hours a day for several months. If we know how to do this, it is because we have been doing crisis management for 20 years.
What is the key factor in building a lasting relationship with your customers?
Our clients expect us to always be proactive, to inform them about key trends and to be able to spot weak signals. The agency must be a partner that helps to step back and look at the client's problems from a different perspective. Finally, over time, it is, of course, about getting results. Without results, clients will look elsewhere.
What is the relevance of crisis communication as a tool to improve the bottom line of clients?
More than crisis communication is risk prevention. Risk prevention not only reduces the risk of a crisis occurring, but when it does occur, it reduces the impact of the crisis and, when it does have an impact, it enables better management and turns the crisis into an opportunity. The Chinese word "crisis" ("Weiji") is composed of two ideograms: "danger" and "opportunity". If we understand danger, we have opportunities ahead of us.
What is the main objective Vae Solis aims to achieve: strategic positioning or brand management to preserve reputation?
In my opinion, the work on strategic positioning cannot be conceived without brand management. Both are enriching each other, and even more so in the current era, when corporate communication is becoming a fundamental element of brand strategy.
How can communication contribute to the creation of synergies between Spanish and French companies?
We are used to working with non-French companies and organisations and we have many international clients in Europe, but also American, Chinese, African, etc. We support French-speaking companies on international issues, but also international clients on their problems in France or in French-speaking countries. Our ability to mobilise a strong international network of high quality partner agencies is clearly an asset for our clients, especially in Spain with Proa Comunicación.