🇫🇷 Joe Pulizzi's french touch

Karine Abbou: Do you have three favorite French brands? 

Joe Pulizzi: I know you sent a little bit to me ahead of time, so I tried to make sure I knew. Isn't Orange? Isn't that the telecom company? Isn't that French? Yeah, I like it just because I love orange. And then of course L'Oreal because I use makeup.com, and then can I even say Moulin Rouge because I love that movie and I think because they had the movie you get more people that want to go check out Moulin Rouge.

KarineAbbou: Do you know just one French entrepreneur and one French marketer? If not, it's OK. I'm just curious.

Joe Pulizzi: I would include one example, and I think this is right because I believe he was born in Paris. But I would say Pierre Omidyar from eBay. Somebody check me on this, I believe he was born in Paris. And what he's been able to do with eBay, Meg Whitman gets a lot of the credit for that, but Pierre was the one behind that. And then what he's done with sustainability and any other businesses that he's created off the back of that is just outstanding. I don't know a lot of the other French entrepreneurs, I would imagine you know, Renault or I mean, I think I've heard of Jack LaLanne. I believe Jack Wilson was French. He's the fitness guru in the United States, but he was French. 

Karine Abbou: But actually, you have one French example in your book. 750gr.

Joe Pulizzi: Yeah, absolutely. Jean Baptiste Dusquenne, fantastic example. Yeah. 

Karine Abbou: I was pretty surprised and happy to see that. Another question: have you heard about the French tech? 

Joe Pulizzi: No, I have not heard about the French tech, but I want you to tell me, what should I know? 

Karine Abbou: France as part of Europe has launched a (sort of) very large think tank and actually also a very “operational community” to help French technology [competing against], you know, Google, Facebook, all the things coming from America. OK, and they're doing, I think, a great job funding those, you know, technology companies from France. They might not do enough on the marketing sides of things. And that was one of my questions, I was curious to know if American marketers and people like you, who are very much into technology and very connected with all those things, were, you know, just familiar with the expression and what they were doing in Europe. 

Joe Pulizzi: No, no, I'm not. Of course, we tend to be insular over here in the United States. We only think of ourselves. So we do better. We need to do better looking outside. We're getting better. Everything's getting better over time. 

Joe Pulizzi: But I want to ask you before we go because you asked me one question about food. And is it called croque monsieur? 

Karine Abbou: Yeah, croque monsieur. 

Joe Pulizzi: That's my favorite thing to eat of anything ever. I think when I was in Paris, I think I had it six or seven times. I love it.

Karine Abbou: OK, so if we want to please you, we're going to Moulin Rouge eating a croque-monsieur!!