Bastien Brunis joins Mascaret Partners as Senior Partner

Mascaret Partners, an independent consulting firm specializing in business communication and influence, announces the arrival of Bastien Brunis, a committed entrepreneur and leading figure in economic dialogue, as Senior Partner in its management team. With over 20 years of experience in business diplomacy, influence, public affairs, and strategic communications, Bastien Brunis joins Mascaret Partners at a time when the group is accelerating its development, particularly following its €7 million fundraising round at the end of 2025.

A unique career at the crossroads of business, institutions, and territories

Former national spokesperson for the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (Medef) and member of its Executive Board, Bastien Brunis was one of the leading voices of France’s largest employers’ organization. A hands-on entrepreneur, he founded Solicom in 2015, a pioneering solidarity-based communications agency in Seine-Saint-Denis. Deeply involved in local economic life, he has been president of Medef de l’Est Parisien since 2020 and sits on the Paris Île-de-France Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Strengthening the strategic support capacity of executives

“Bastien’s dual experience—as a committed entrepreneur and a recognized representative of the economic world—is a major asset for our partnership,” say Benjamin Grange and Robert Zarader, co-founders of Mascaret Partners.


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Bona Fide and Mascaret join forces!

Today, we are pleased to announce the merger between Mascaret, a specialist in business communication, and Bona fidé, the forward-thinking agency.

Our merger gives rise to a new independent communications and influence consulting firm with more than 50 employees in France.

🚀 Our ambition: to serve the value and values of the company.

We now combine unique expertise in communications intelligence and strategic narrative design with combined capabilities in media relations, public relations, institutional relations, crisis management, business diplomacy, opinion analysis, and editorial creation.

The operation is supported by €7 million in fundraising, with a strengthening of the position of the Entrepreneur Invest fund.

The two brands, Bona fidé and Mascaret, will continue to exist. The management of the new entity will remain in the hands of the partners: Raphaëlle Giniès, Stéphanie Laurent, Estelle MONRAISSE, Laure Pallez, Léa Roussarie, Yves CENSI, and Samuel Jequier. Joint governance will be led by Robert ZARADER and Benjamin GRANGE.

This is a new chapter for each of the employees of the new entity…

See you soon for more announcements.

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The Left’s Meetings with Carole Delga

On September 27, 2025, Laure Pallez moderated a roundtable discussion with Carole Delga on the international situation at the Rencontres de la Gauche (Left-wing Meetings) in Bram, in the Aude department, last weekend.

At BRAM 2025, we asked the uncomfortable question: is globalization a happy or a sad phenomenon?

🌍 Testimonials, debates, voices for peace, different perspectives on the Middle East, the political consequences of climate change, the notion of sovereignty at a time when politics, economics, and technology are increasingly converging. Committed speakers and a national narrative to be rebuilt so as not to give in to the temptation to turn inward.

Between the tech titans of Silicon Valley and the strategists in Beijing, Europe must forge its own path: that of a balancing power, bold diplomacy, and a narrative capable of bringing people together.

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Technical incident and symbolic crisis: a look back at the weekend banking failure that raises questions about its public management

This weekend, a technical glitch paralyzed the payment services of several banks. But what is being described as a technical glitch actually reveals a much deeper symbolic crisis.

💳 The bug didn’t just prevent transfers and payments. It affected a fundamental symbol: our relationship with money. In a context of growing mistrust of financial institutions, this failure has reignited conspiracy theories about citizens losing control of their money, the forced digitization of payment methods, and even theories of collapse.

📊 What social media is saying According to a Talkwalker analysis of two of the banks affected, this event generated:

📈 The biggest spike in mentions in 13 months

💬 65,000 mentions over the weekend, almost twice as many as previous peaks

📉 The biggest drop in sentiment in 13 months

😠 60% negative sentiment

The most viral posts did not focus on the technical nature of the bug, but on political and societal interpretations. The conspiracy theory sphere seized on the subject, linking it to the call for cash payments scheduled for September 10.

🧠 Key takeaways

In a world where every technical incident can turn into a symbolic crisis, speed, transparency, and contextualization are the pillars of effective communication.

It is no longer just a matter of fixing the problem, but of reassuring, explaining, and anticipating in order to preserve the contract of trust between the brand and its users.

It may be tempting for the company affected by the outage to remain silent. But staying silent means losing control of the narrative, which can then be exploited by others.

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Mascaret is hiring – Junior Consultant

🎯 Internship – Junior Business Communications Consultant

Join a leading business communications firm based in Paris’s 1st arrondissement starting in summer 2025!

▶️ What you’ll be doing: monitoring, press relations, stakeholder mapping, project management, corporate communications.

🎓 Do you have a bachelor’s or master’s degree, are you thorough and curious, and do you have strong analytical and writing skills?

📩 Send your resume and a short cover letter to recrutement@mascaret-partners.com

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Power, showmanship, and partnerships: communication is part of the art of war.

Today, September 3, China will stage a military parade to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. This is a strong signal, coming the day after the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), sometimes referred to as the NATO of the non-aligned countries. The group photo speaks for itself and represents 42% of the world’s population.

Objectives: 1) to counterbalance the West without copying its codes, despite the inspiration that ENA provided for the training of Chinese elites, and above all 2) to establish Xi Jinping’s leadership in China vis-à-vis his people and then external powers, “a security force that can be relied upon” according to Chinese commentators.

Everyone is playing their part pragmatically:

➡️The slogan of “unlimited friendship” between Russia and China? Under review, thank you Aaron Glasserman for your insights from 🇺🇸

➡️🐉🐘 Facing the United States, “the dragon (China) and the elephant (India) must get along,” Xi Jinping explained yesterday, without ever mentioning Donald Trump.

➡️Monday’s rejection by the E3 (France, UK, Germany) of the process to reinstate UN sanctions against Tehran and its nuclear program is significant.

India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia… All are seeking to assert their autonomy.
A variable geometry multilateralism and “deals” that will be made on a case-by-case basis with Brussels or Washington.

Finally, the military parade is also a huge call for tenders with very tangible benefits for neighboring countries… and our French entrepreneurs abroad. Florian Bohême – Advisor to French citizens abroad in Cambodia

Diplomacy is also about numbers. With or without us.

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SpaceDreamS, French space ambitions

This week, we are proud to highlight the impressive visibility of our client SpaceDreamS in Le Figaro, which devoted a long article to its bold vision of access to space on the occasion of the #Bourget hashtag trade show.

✨ Far from making abstract promises, Christian Canart, CEO of SpaceDreamS, and his team are applying a simple but revolutionary principle to the space sector: sharing launch pads in the same way that runways are shared at airports. It’s an industrial, pragmatic approach designed to support the rise of small and medium-sized launchers.

Their goal? To create a global network of universal, mobile space bases capable of accommodating light launchers, reducing launch costs by half, and opening up access to space to new public and private players.

👏 Bravo to the SpaceDreamS teams. Thank you for your trust!

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The Mascaret agency was present at the 25th edition of the Rencontres économiques d’Aix-en-Provence.

A clash of realities or a widening of the Overton window?

The clash of realities is that of a Europe of 27, or that of the founding fathers, according to some commentators, seeking its place in the economic and technological competition between China and the US. A Europe forced to juggle between a minimalist agreement with the US and a delicate dance with Beijing.

What if the Overton window widened to the point where “Make Europe Great Again” became audible?

European sovereignty, a concept unknown in Washington, is gradually becoming a shared horizon. Fiction or reality?

Businesses, civil society, journalists, international think tanks… all came together for an edition marked by intense discussions and a wealth of perspectives.

📆 See you in a year.

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Odoxa-Mascaret Barometer: Mayors are France’s favorite elected officials.

Proximity breeds popularity.

With municipal elections just a few months away and against a backdrop of distrust and even acute mistrust of politics, a revealing survey by Public Sénat with ODOXA and Mascaret (formerly Dentsu Consulting) confirms that mayors rank first in terms of popularity among elected officials. With 60% of respondents having a good or very good opinion of them, mayors are far ahead of all other representatives in the political sphere.

However, this result should not obscure a worrying reality: the ever-increasing difficulties experienced by mayors in carrying out their duties, particularly tensions within municipal councils and the growing violence to which they are subjected. A worrying number of mayors are resigning (2,189 resignations between 2020 and 2025) or not standing for re-election because of this.

Will increasing mayors’ allowances and changing their status be enough to stem the tide of departures and attract new candidates? This is not a statutory issue, but a democratic one.

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With his surrender strategy, is Trump seeking to symbolically identify himself with Eisenhower?

On June 21, 2025, Donald Trump took a major step with Operation Midnight Hammer.

After several days of threats and ultimatums, the US president demanded Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” citing the defense of vital US interests. This phrase, borrowed from Eisenhower and laden with historical significance, echoes Japan’s surrender in 1945, which ended World War II. By invoking this memory, Trump seeks to place his actions in a tradition of assertive power, where peace is only negotiated after a show of force.

But this martial stance divides American opinion. While 73% of citizens consider Iran a serious threat, according to a recent hashtag#Fox poll, only pro-Trump Republicans overwhelmingly support military intervention, believing that “Israel’s war is America’s war,” a conviction that is particularly strong in Florida, a conservative stronghold led by Governor DeSantis, a fervent supporter of Israel.

Intervention 📺on June 22 on franceinfo

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