Between promises, fears and realities, artificial intelligence (AI) was on the lips of all world leaders in Davos.
Returning from the heights of Switzerland a few days ago, the chairman of the board of Publicis, Arthur Sadoun, is launching his offensive to accelerate in AI.
He will put 300 million euros on the table over three years.
“
AI was not born with ChatGPT, it was already at the heart of our know-how for many years
,” explains the manager to Le
Figaro
.
“Having broken down our silos, AI will enable us to move to an ‘intelligent system enterprise’ with a single, simplified architecture
,” he adds.
Concretely, the French communications group, world number one in the sector in terms of stock market valuation, has been working for several months on the construction of a single database where all the data accumulated over the years will be pooled.
That's 2.3 billion user profiles worldwide, trillions of data points analyzing the commercial performance of campaigns, the content of its Marcel platform... But also several decades of commercial transformation data and lines of code held by Sapient, its entity specializing in technology and consulting, bought for $3.7 billion ten years ago.
“I believe that a company will not be able to reap the full benefits and benefit from AI without having transformed, as Publicis has done over the last six years, its model with proprietary data at the center
,” slips Arthur Sadoun.
A race against its rivals
In the race against the British WPP, the world number one in the sector in terms of revenue, and the American Omnicom, Publicis wants to strengthen the capabilities of its 100,000 employees by giving them all access to the same resources.
“With our new AI base, each employee will be able to become a data expert and code like an engineer
,” he says.
Enough to shake up the balance of the pyramid hierarchy and the principles of training and transmission of knowledge between senior and junior profiles...
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The investment of one hundred million euros planned for 2024 will be distributed between training, team recruitment, and technology through the purchase of licenses, computer software and Cloud infrastructure.
It is Sapient, which notably helps the giant Nvidia to design the chips used for training large language models, which is building Publicis' AI base.
As its centenary approaches, the group hopes to increase its capabilities in five major areas: from research to the development of media plans, including the creation of ultra-personalized advertising films, the development of new software or improvement of internal processes.
As an example, Arthur Sadoun mentions the potential need for an automobile manufacturer to sell 40,000 SUV electric vehicles in one year in the United States.
“
Instead of research lasting several weeks, our collaborators will be able to obtain in a few seconds an analysis of major market trends, the key audiences to target in the media, with systems that allow us to see in the second if a campaign is effective and change the strategy if necessary.
For example, regions in the United States that lack cars or the perception of the product on social networks
,” he explains.
For calls for tender, the ambition is to be able to put together a file in a few hours instead of several days.
Publicis, which generates half of its revenues in the United States, announces organic growth of 6.3% for the year 2023. On the CAC 40, it displays a capitalization of 22.2 billion euros this Thursday morning.
While the group has more than 40,000 engineers and data experts on its teams, and its media activity only represents a third of its revenues, it is refusing to become a technology company.
“We are not a tech company, but a company that has data and technology at the heart of its model, in the same way that Tesla is an automobile manufacturer or Amazon a distributor
,” explains Arthur Sadoun.
“What is certain is that we have moved from a communications group to a preferred partner of our clients in their transformation
,” he concludes.