A senior independent consultant, upstream of your EU bids
Twenty years in agencies, fifteen of them within WPP, and nineteen years of weekly analysis of EU communication. Since August 2026, Michaël Malherbe makes this experience available to agencies working for the institutions in Brussels, at the moment a bid is decided and a set-up is designed: by the assignment, in English and French, on site or remotely.
Cette page en français : Pour les agences.
Two assignments
The strategic note that comes before the bid
The useful moment sits before the response is produced, once the decision to compete is taken and the angle is still open. The note brings a practitioner’s view over the long run: what the contracting authority has already attempted in this field, what worked, what failed and why. From that reading come the choices that shape the positioning of the bid.
A team preparing a reopening of competition has three weeks. It does not have the distance of fifteen years of continuous observation, and that distance cannot be rebuilt on demand. It can be hired, for a few days, at the right moment.
Fixed fee, by deliverable. White-label if the agency prefers: it keeps the relationship with the buyer. A senior key-expert CV in EU procurement format can be included in the bid.
The voice of the Union’s experts
Those officially authorised to speak for the institutions, Commissioners, Directors-General and spokespersons, cover the political agenda. Sectoral and technical policies fall outside that perimeter: Directorate-General pages sweep across broad subjects without depth, and the experts who draft the files are neither equipped nor authorised to speak. It is a reserve of organic voice, while bought audience costs more every year.
The diagnosis turns into a set-up: selection of the voices, an ethical framework, training, sustained editorial support, and measurement of what is actually carried. For an agency, it is a lot to propose to its client Directorate-General and a point of difference in its bid.
Ten years of executive voice programmes on LinkedIn, transposed to the European sphere.
What builds this perspective
Cohn & Wolfe, Paris, 2011-2015: head of the digital practice
- Framework contract of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communication, won at the end of 2011 within the consortium led by JWT, contractor from 2012 to 2016: project manager of the case study that contributed to the award.
- Horizon 2020, DG Research and Innovation (2013-2014): media relations and social media in the 28 Member States around EU-funded research projects; social media team leader.
- Startup Europe, DG CONNECT (2014): successful start-ups as role models in six Member States; social media manager, author of the final report.
- “Ex-smokers are unstoppable”, DG SANTE (2015-2016): anti-tobacco campaign in the 28 Member States; central and local social media strategy of the winning bid.
- Consumer credit rights, DG Justice and Consumers (2015-2016): Austria, Czech Republic, Greece; central social media strategy, coordination of local press and stakeholder relations.
- European Commission Representation in France: audit of online opinion leaders on Europe (2012); media and social media coverage of the Citizens’ Dialogues in Marseille (2013) and Paris (2014); speaker at the Commission’s Social Media Network (2013).
- Sabre Award 2012 for the best European campaign in corporate reputation and public education.
Two4com, 2015-2016: independent agency
- An agency founded to test these convictions independently.
- As a subcontractor to a Brussels agency, two strategic notes for institutional bids: the evaluation of the Commission’s Europa portal (audience and social accounts audit) and the digital transformation of communication for an EU agency (satellite navigation).
Burson-Marsteller i&e, then BCW, 2016-2024: social media and executive voice
- First LinkedIn programmes for executives from 2016, then head of the social media team within the integrated data, design and digital hub.
- Adviser to two successive heads of WPP in France; employee advocacy programmes for LEO Pharma, Suez, Corteva and UCB.
- Alongside, in 2017: social media strategy, guidelines and team training for Toute l’Europe; moderator of the workshop “How to talk about Europe better?” at the European Rendez-vous of Strasbourg organised by ENA.
Burson, Paris, 2024-2026: Director, executive communication
- Within the Data & AI Lab: leader advocacy programmes for the head of European affairs of GRDF, an industrial director and executive committee member, the dean of EDHEC and the co-founder and CEO of ManoMano.
- Designed the Creator Advocacy and Generative Engine Optimization offers.
Lacomeuropéenne, teaching, think tank
- Lacomeuropéenne, since 2007: one thousand seven hundred analyses of the communication of the institutions, the Member States and the discourse on Europe, published every week under a single byline; quoted by Le Monde, Le Figaro, France 24, France Info, France Culture and Euractiv. Two articles in Convergences, the journal of the Club of Venice (June 2026).
- EU communication courses at Sorbonne Nouvelle since 2013 and at Sciences Po Strasbourg; at Sorbonne Université from 2011 to 2025.
- Volunteer Secretary General of Atelier Europe: study visits to the capitals of the Council presidencies (Madrid, Brussels, Budapest, Warsaw, Copenhagen), policy papers on the Clean Industrial Deal, the AI Act and the Defence White Paper; co-author of Habeas Mentem, the agenda for Europe’s cognitive autonomy.
How to work together
- Sole trader, based in Paris, on site in Brussels on request.
- Both assignments are sold at a fixed fee, by deliverable. Reinforcement on a running lot is handled by the day.
- Subcontracting and white-label work accepted.
- English and French.
- Detailed references and a key-expert CV in EU procurement format on request.
- Available now.
A first conversation
Thirty minutes are enough to frame the need: a decision to compete to be informed, a voice programme to be designed, a running lot to be reinforced.
French version: Pour les agences.