When Fabrice Gueneau named his brand-new branding and marketing agency Dream On 18 years ago, he probably didn’t know how much the name would apply.

Paris-based Dream On got its start almost by accident. Gueneau was an advertising creative working in London and Paris. One of Gueneau’s good friends was French television producer Jean Luc, and he asked Gueneau to design the opens to two of his television shows.

Those opens led other producers to ask Gueneau to work for them, and Dream On was born. The name has proven fortuitous: Dream On has evolved from a project-based branding agency into an international 360 branding and marketing firm, handling everything from channel brands, digital presence, social media and more for its global roster of clients. And while Dream On got its start in France, it’s always looked far beyond the French borders to find new clients, projects and challenges.

“Dream On has always been very international in the way we develop our clients,” says Juliette Clerc, director of Dream On’s television department. “We cannot only live within the French market; it’s too small.”

Last year, Dream On branded a channel in Ukraine, and this year it’s branding a channel in Singapore. The agency also does work in Germany and Eastern Europe, and it has twice rebranded France’s internationally distributed channel, TV 5 Monde. It also works at home, designing this open for a French talk show on parenting called Les Maternelles.

And Dream On will shortly unveil its own new, completely redesigned Web site.

Most recently, Dream On has been working in the emerging African market, designing program branding for Canal + Afrique and channel branding for CanalSat’s new pan-African channel, A +, which covers more than 20 African countries. Dream On also is designing a Web site for A+ that will soon be online.

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Creating digital presences in emerging markets such as Africa presents an additional challenge because so many people do not have fast Internet service.

“We had to develop a vintage Web site for all of the people who don’t have good connections, and then develop a modern version for all those who can,” says Clerc. “Everything is like this in Africa. On one hand, they are all aware of today’s media culture. They are watching shows like House and other big hits, but they are also attached to their local programs.”

Part of Dream On’s success is that it’s always been acutely aware that creating network brands and identities requires intimate knowledge of the local culture. The agency is self aware enough to know that it needs local expertise to best do its job, so it always recruits local agencies and producers to help it do its best work.

“We always find partners locally,” says Clerc. “At different stages of a project, we always try to find people who are living there and working in media, advertising or branding just to get to know the spirit and the specificities of the local culture.”

That lesson was driven home when Dream On was working with clients in the Middle East, Clerc says.

“When you work in Europe, you feel like you understand that culture,” she says. “When you go to the Middle East, you arrive into another world of media, content and culture.”

Dream On’s work with local partners steps up when it gets to the production phase.

“Once we get to production, we don’t want to make mistakes so we always partner with executive production companies, guaranteeing perfect casting and perfect location choices. We also don’t want to make mistakes in clothing and color choices, because those reflect different things in different countries, especially in territories like the Middle East and China,” says Clerc.

“We are always very humble in approaching other countries. We don’t want to just export Dream On’s style, we want to be able to mix Dream On’s style in with that of the local companies and culture.”

To help it find local production companies across the globe, Dream On makes a point of attending conferences across the world to network, find work and identify new partners. The agency has been attending PromaxBDA’s European conferences for years—including Berlin, which just concluded—and it also heads to PromaxBDA confabs in Dubai and Africa.

“PromaxBDA has been a big help for us to find partners over the years, and has gotten us to travel more and get to know more people abroad,” says Clerc.

It also attends NATPE Europe, which will be held in Prague this summer, MIP and MIPCOM, held in Cannes, France.

Looking ahead, Dream On is currently rebranding public television channels in Switzerland and working closely with the Paris Opera, including building a new Web site for the international opera house, which will soon be up and running.

“It’s a big digital project with a lot of content, including high-quality video. We publish all the programs for every night’s show, and do all the communication including outdoor. We’re also retouching the branding,” says Clerc. “The experience we have in media branding, promotion and communication was really useful for us when we worked on the Opera pitch. In the end, like TV, the Opera is a brand that promotes shows and uses every means of communication to talk to the public.”

Clerc acknowledges that the competition is stiffer than ever, but she has faith in Dream On’s original vision: “Our strength is our global approach.”

Cube image courtesy of Dream On, featuring Founder and President Fabrice Gueneau, Clerc and Creative Director Anthony Sebaoun.

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