Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nicolas Loufrani (3rd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. ansh 666 21:20, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Nicolas Loufrani
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The article is a re-creation of a WP:COATRACK article that is more about the company than the man, and seems lacking in adequate in-depth coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the topic. Two similar discussions have both resulted in deletion of similar prior articles with the same name. We certainly should not need three separate articles for this man, his father Franklin Loufrani and their company, The Smiley Company. In fact, one article should be plenty. —BarrelProof (talk) 05:02, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. —BarrelProof (talk) 05:05, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of France-related deletion discussions. —BarrelProof (talk) 05:08, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete, this does not meet the notability guidelines. Note that this article may have been created by the company itself as they link to this article on their website: http://www.smiley.com/corporate. I have unveiled several manipulations of Wikipedia by the Smiley company in the past, i.e. in the article Smiley in several language versions of Wikipedia. The article Nicolas Loufrani (which then was deleted a year ago) was one of it. --TheRandomIP (talk) 07:15, 27 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: Note that both of the other two closely-related articles that are mentioned above were created by blocked users. This article was created only a few days ago by a user that has an edit history of only about 30 edits. That edit history includes only two brief periods of activity (for about one month two years ago, and then a few edits on March 27, 2018). The edits are mostly about companies, and generally display a high degree of familiarity with Wikipedia, markup formatting, citation templates, etc. —BarrelProof (talk) 17:24, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep - The current text relies heavily on media associated with (or about) Smiley, which leads credence to a merge. That being said, an isolated search found the following links from reliable publications that focus on Loufrani to meet WP:GNG. Press: Interviews:   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Willie d troudour (talk • contribs) 22:25, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Keep: The number of sources and mentions in the press on the article lead me to belive that the subject should meet notability requirements. After reading through the above discussion I can see that the subject of the article has a sketchy history, but it doesn't appear to be overly promotional or focus more on the company than his own contributions. PcPrincipal (talk) 17:25, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect to The Smiley Company, no indication of individual notability outside of the company. -- J04n(talk page) 13:22, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Sandstein   16:27, 4 April 2018 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Comment: I have also nominated the Franklin Loufrani article for deletion. The discussion can be found at Articles for deletion/Franklin Loufrani. I repeat the suggestion that one article should be enough; we can redirect the titles about the two men to the article about the company, as they don't seem to have a notability that is very distinct. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:33, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  MBisanz  talk 13:35, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect to the company. no independent notability, and no encyclopedic interest otherwise.  DGG ( talk ) 21:03, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment: I don’t really understand why the deletion process is so harsh. I see now, through what has come up in this discussion, that perhaps I could have worked on the page a bit more before I submitted it. But how is immediately deleting something rather than working with the person who put it together supposed to help anyone learn? I would have been happy to work with someone who understand Wikipedia better than I do. I still don’t exactly understand what I did wrong here, and am happy to show where my information came from. I tried to understand Wikipedia a while back, and was overwhelmed. Now, I decided to give it another go and feel like new people have no place in this community.

I was reading up about past Olympics. Saw some interesting information on the page for the 2000 Summer Olympics which didn’t have sources before, so I added a few things I found. There doesn’t seem to be a problem with what I did there. I read about the closing ceremony over Sydney Harbour, and remembered seeing the Sydney Harbour Bridge mentioned in a history book or something I had read when I was in school, so I wanted to learn more about that. I saw an inclusion that didn’t seem to go along with other pages I have seen, as there was a section called “Other sources” rather than “Further reading,” which seemed to be appropriate. Someone undid that work, though I don’t understand how it went against Manual of Style guidelines, as indicated. In any case, I kept on, wanting to help improve the encyclopedia. I saw on the Bridge page that “Smiley face” linked to another page. I never really though about the history of the smiley and decided to read about it. That page talked about a man, Nicolas Loufrani, who from what I can tell contributed to expanding the lone smiley face into the expressions and emoticons that we use today. That would make him an important part of cultural history, which is the type of figure an encyclopedia would talk about.

Nicolas Loufrani clearly has “significant coverage” from “reliable” sources. In all the research I did for the page, I found “significant” coverage about Loufrani in the Smithsonian, New York Times, The Guardian, Vice, and even coverage in other languages. Everything I added was clearly sourced, and I don’t see why the page needs to be reduced as it has been. There is proof for everything that was mentioned on the page. This wasn’t something thrown together without thought. He is a separate entity from his father and has a much more lasting impact. He made the use of emoticons into what we see today. Were he not well know, I would have never come across him at all! I had no idea before clicking on the Smiley face page the intricates of the background or that it was a trademarked image. I would love some help here trying to make this page correct according to the community rather than just have it blatantly deleted. I see that the discussion has uncovered some references I hadn’t used previously, so I am going to make another attempt here to help the page.

Sources on the page –

Reuters - Part I pulled from: “Loufrani runs Smileyworld Ltd.”

Smithsonian – About Loufrani: In 1996, Loufrani’s son Nicolas took over the family business and transformed it into an empire. He formalized the mark with a style guide and further distributed it through global licensing agreements including, perhaps most notably, some of the earliest graphic emoticons. Parts I pulled: He formalized the mark with a style guide and further distributed it through global licensing agreements …Today, the Smiley Company makes more than $130 million a year and is one of the top 100 licensing companies of the world.

Vice - Part I pulled from: Franklin's son Nicolas joined him in the licensing-the-smiley-face-out business, and somehow turned its fortunes around. SmileyWorld Ltd now owns the rights to the logo in over 80 countries and turns over $265 million (£204 million) every year.

LSA Commerce & Consommation – Important parts: Nicolas Loufrani, CEO of SmileyWorld. A genius idea found by his father, Franklin Loufrani, who had taken care to file, in 1971, the Smiley logo and mark at the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). Nicolas designs variations of the original

New York Times – Parts I pulled from: Nicolas Loufrani runs the company SmileyWorld, which is challenging Wal-Mart Stores' rights to the smiley face. His father, Franklin Loufrani, says he devised the symbol for the newspaper France Soir in 1971.

The Guardian - What I pulled from: the Smiley has also been surrounded by copyright controversies ever since the early 1970s when a Frenchman, Franklin Loufrani registered the trademark as Smiley World in some European countries. Wal-Mart tried to copyright the Smiley in 2006, but lost the case to Smiley World.

The Guardian - Pulled from the following: Nicholas Loufrani, who has taken over his father's happy empire.

iNews - Pulled from: Almost exactly 20 years ago, the two finally become one, and together with his father as its president, Loufrani launched The Smiley Company. It was his mission to breathe new life into his yellow-headed brother, not only by digitising him, but to give him emotions.

This is Money - Pulled from: Nicolas joined in 1996 and transformed it into a consumer merchandising licensing model. Today it is one of the world's top 150 licensing firms with 230 global licensees

Licensing.biz - Important parts from interview: The next major landmark was in 1997 when I joined the business and recognised the need to develop the brand into digital, and with that connect with a new generation of Smiley consumer. I noticed the use of early emoticons in mobile and digital and revolutionised Smiley forever by creating the first graphic emoticons used in technology, and SmileyWorld was born. This allowed us to create a collection of icons that expressed thousands of emotions and could be applied to a variety of products. Through this we created loads of new business opportunities, and also attached the brand to a whole new generation of Smiley consumers - the digital natives. I’ve spent the last few years moving Smiley away from its traditional ‘nuts and bolts’ consumer licensing model and repositioning it as a standalone lifestyle brand, by investing heavily in our design and marketing studio and this has caused real growth in the last year.

Licensing.biz - Important parts: After creating these graphical emoticons, we registered the trademarks for a new brand and intellectual property – and SmileyWorld was born. We then registered these designs with the United States Copyright Office from 1997 to 2000 and started publishing all of our newly created emoticons as .gif files on the web in 1998. These were the world’s first graphical emoticons used online. In 2000 we re-launched our website with all our icons as smileydictionary.com and the slogan The Official Smiley Dictionary. It was shortly afterwards that we started licensing the rights for our graphical emoticons to different telecom companies that included Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, SFR (vodaphone) and Sky Telemedia. We have over 230 licensees globally across 13 product categories.

Cinco Dias - Pulled from: The culprit is Nicolas Loufrani. who saw in the icons the birth of a new form of communication. His father, Franklin Loufrani, created in 1971 the smiley, the classic smiley yellow face, and Nicolas decided to develop it giving rise to a new language. Today, Nicolas Loufrani is in charge of a company that moves 265 million dollars (232 million euros) a year, The Smiley Company Brand. At first there was only one smiley, the classic, but when I entered the business, I used the digital technology of the time to do it in 3D. This allowed them to have more mobility, they could change the emotions, add accessories to them from different nationalities, create sports icons ... This is how we launched the first smileys dictionary. My slogan was "the birth of a universal language", the idea was to create a global language to replace the text.

The Times- Pulled: Nicolas Loufrani, founder of the Smiley Company, launched the yellow smiling face onto the internet in 1998. The Official Smiley Dictionary followed in 2001, with the aim of creating a “universal language”. Emojis followed.

The Drum - These operations pottered on until the 90s when Loufrani’s son Nicholas officially joined the business with a mind to shake things up. Arguably he started this process with his job title, which in full reads: creative mastermind, spiritual guide, beloved leader and commander-in-chief of the happiness forces. It’s a joke, of course, designed to raise a smile. “My idea was to bring more life to that logo,” he told The Drum. “I was fed up of it – I had seen it since I was born and I wanted to create something new. I started creating a 3D rendering of that flat logo, and from that 3D rendering I started developing lots of different emotions. “The Smiley started winking, poking the tongue out, laughing out loud, and I also started developing lots of different categories. Smiley became a character to identify different countries for instance. These Smileys became new properties for us. I realised my Smileys should replace these text emoticons and that they should be the new universal language that everybody could recognise.” In 2007, Loufrani again decided to change the pace of Smiley and move it towards ambitious new territories: lifestyle and luxury. Amazingly, this bold strategy paid dividends while still functioning under the licensing model. Smiley continues to work with grocers and high street retailers but can now count the likes of Fendi, Dior and Adidas by Stella McCartney as clients. This success is partially a testament to the brand’s sales team but, Loufrani believes, high-profile clients such as these come to Smiley looking for a kindred spirit.

La Parisien - From interview - "My father created this logo when he worked for France Soir. The brand was registered in 1971. When I arrived in 1997, I saw behind this smile a commercial potential and development of derivative products, "explains Nicolas Loufrani, CEO of Smiley World and son of journalist Franklin Loufrani. At the beginning of the 2000s, we created a brand universe, introducing the Smiley in several forms to bring it to life. We grouped them in a dictionary in 2002 and we have more than 3,000 different models. In 2017, the smiley will appear in a novel for youth, to appear at Editis, while a comic book project should also see the light, "and a personal development book around the concept of emotion, "says the young CEO. While a cartoon is also in the boxes, the company - for a percentage on sales - has just acquired the rights of merchandising Rubik's Cube, simply the best-selling toy in the world. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MarshDustE3 (talk • contribs) 14:15, 20 April 2018 (UTC)  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Evaluation of sources, please?

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, ansh 666 04:06, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete: Does not meet WP:ANYBIO; no notability independent of the company. Sourcing is in passing and / or WP:SPIP. I'm not a fan of redirecting BLPs to corporation; they may get acquired / renamed. Since the subject is not independently notable, better off deleted. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:01, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete. The sources are inadequate to meet the requirements for bio,but the company is notable.   The argument for keeping amounts to "I know he's notable"  DGG ( talk ) 07:31, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete; seem to be plenty of mentions in sources but always in the context of The Smiley Company. I'm not getting any indication of notability independent of the company. ~ mazca  talk 21:00, 2 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.