Former Canal Plus Communications Execs Laurence Gallot, Antoine Banet-Rivet Launch Monday Conseil

Former Canal Plus executives Laurence Gallot and Antoine Banet-Rivet, two of France’s most senior and connected communications honchos, have joined forces to launch Monday Conseil, a PR agency.

Paris-based, Monday Conseil will specialize in providing PR services and consultancy to French and international players involved in France’s media and entertainment industry, including tech and digital companies with content production and distribution interests, the partners said in a written statement on Monday.

More specifically, Monday Conseil will help “companies, executives and public figures in all aspects of their communication, including corporate communications, crisis management, digital strategy, leadership and reputation, coaching and press launches,” Banet-Rivet and Gallot stated.

To do so, the two communications specialists can bring decades of top-ranking, insider know-how gleaned at Vivendi-owned Canal Plus, a driving force in France’s film and TV industry in the most regulated film and TV market in the world where the cinema industry, which has in Canal Plus its biggest investor, is regarded with a seriousness that only Hollywood can match.

Gallot joined the French pay TV giant in 1992, rising rapidly to become the Canal Plus Group’s communications executive VP and member of the company’s executive board in 2003, adding the Group’s partnerships department to her responsibilities in 2015.

Entering Canal Plus in 2000, Banet-Rivet was appointed director of internal communication in 2002 and head of corporate and internal communications in 2005. In 2015, he became executive VP of the Canal Plus Group-owned Studiocanal, Europe’s biggest film and TV production-distribution-sales company.

After such service, Gallot and Banet-Rivet’s expertise ranges they said, from “movies, content production and distribution, sports rights tenders, and digital transition” to “public figure reputation, legal and regulatory issues, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, and financial communications.”

“All with a tailor-made, hands-on approach, from diagnosis to implementation,” they added.

A huge number of French media executives and even government officials have worked at some point or other for Canal Plus, giving Gallot and Banet-Rivet a vast range of contacts.

Monday Conseil’s launch also comes at a propitious time of vertiginous change in France’s film and TV sector.

Confounding naysayers, U.S. streaming platforms such as Netflix have run up a rapid multi-million sub base in France but now face the most onerous of government-sanctioned investment quotas in local film and TV of any country in Europe.

Via trade lobbies such as the Paris-based European Producers Club, France’s national film and TV industry also leads Europe’s industry pushback for new regulation, obliging streaming platforms to share IP and produce with its independent production sector.