Publicis Unveils its Highly-anticipated AI App, Marcel

It was almost a year ago that Publicis Groupe’s CEO Arthur Sadoun announced that no Publicis agencies would be entering work to any award shows for the following 12 months and today at Paris’ Viva Tech conference, the reason behind this decision – to invest in AI platform, Marcel – was revealed.

Publicis Groupe founder Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet introduced Marcel to the audience, detailing how the digital platform will connect its 80,000 employees and allow them to work more intelligently and in a more collaborative way. 

The augmented platform contains data about all of Publicis’ employees, allowing them to tap into the knowledge and skills of anyone within the network on any sort of job.

“Tying the development of Marcel to our one-year industry event hiatus was a controversial decision, but a necessary one.” 

Whether it’s finding an expert on a niche topic, crowdsourcing ideas for a brand's name or researching case studies, Bleustein-Blanchet said Marcel is a powerful yet seemingly useful and practical app that connects all the offices together effortlessly.

The app has been founded on four principles; knowledge, connectivity, opportunity and productivity – and aims to educate; connect; encourage; and free up the Publicis workforce by having the app complete tedious tasks like timesheets and expenses.

Working with an estimated five billion data files, Marcel’s AI Platform has been built on Microsoft AI and Knowledge Graph technologies which structure, centralise and organise data making it easier for employees to engage with.

Above: Marcel, The Vision

Creating Marcel was a network-wide team effort; Sapient developed its user design and experience, while BBH created its brand identity. Microsoft also acted as a partner on the Marcel innovation, providing knowledge and advice on making the Marcel experience as smooth as possible.

Despite Publicis’ withdrawal from Cannes Lions this year, the Marcel platform will feed into the International Festival of Creativity’s newly-launched digital platform, The Work, which will showcase over 200,000 pieces of award-winning creative work between 2001-2018. 

Above: Marcel, The Demo

Following this announcement, 100 alpha users will test the app and provide feedback on its developments. And then, from June, the Groupe will release a beta version to 1,000 people to gain additional feedback on the app’s functions. Publicis revelaed that the plan is for 90 per cent of the network to be using the app by 2020.

“Tying the development of Marcel to our one-year industry event hiatus was a controversial decision, but a necessary one,” says the Groupe’s chairman and CEO, Arthur Sadoun. “It drew a line in the sand and left no doubt that we are determined to do whatever it takes to reinvent an industry that has struggled to evolve over the past 40 years. So, I’m grateful to our people, our clients, and our partners at industry festivals around the world for their support and solidarity during this period, which will end in July 2018.”

The Marcel app is available on both Android and iOS, although future versions for desktop and other interfaces will be developed in due course.