‘When it comes to France you never know what to expect from us...’
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Updated: 11 hours ago
Publicis Groupe’s emeritus chairman Maurice Lévy and CEO Arthur Sadoun took to the Lumière stage on Monday afternoon to reflect on the company’s story as it turns 100, and consider where the agency and the industry as a whole are headed next. With France appointed Creative Country of the Year at Cannes Lions, Sadoun started with a reminder of how the nation has spent a century disproportionately shaping what great creative work looks like, despite representing just 2% of total billing. “When it comes to France, you never know what to expect from us. And actually, I would say that we are unpredictably brilliant,” he said. “We are the first to talk about data, technology, and this is a big topic at the moment, but we are still a people business,” he said, adding that France has an unfair share of talent.
Looking to the future Lévy said the emergence of agentic AI will be “extremely useful” and capable of “quite staggering” results. “At the end of the day, we should never, never, ever forget that what is at the core of what we are doing, is a little bit of intuition, a lot of intelligence, and a big, big idea,” he said.
“If you are relying only on AI, without taking in the human factor, you will get always the same result.” What makes the result different, he said, is the fact that you have somebody different, leading the work and changing and nourishing the ideas.
Addressing the issue of how an onslaught of AI companies could disrupt the landscape and break up the duopoly of Google and Meta, Sadoun said the agency role then becomes even more important. “We are the connective tissue that can actually drive our client through the transformation, maximise their media and push on creativity. So I don’t think one is going to take on the other. I do think that the one that is going to win, is the one that will be able to balance technology with humankind.”
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