Publicis unveils first draft of its Marcel artificial intelligence platform
Marcel, Publis Groupe’s artificial intelligence platform, had its first public showing last night with CEO Arthur Sadoun giving a demonstration of the personal app intended to give the organisation’s 80,000 employees access to the group’s global resources.
The announcement of the project in June last year saw Sadoun bar the group’s agencies from entering awards as the organisation focused on rolling out the platform.
“We have broken the divide between data, creativity and technology,” said Sadoun. “We have broken our silos through the Power of One. Today, we are breaking the barriers between talent and opportunity with Marcel.”
With Sadoun at the launch was Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The software company was engaged by Publicis in January this year to build the global ‘professional assistant’ designed by Publicis’ consultancy arm Publicis.Sapient.
“Marcel is a journey to shift Publicis Groupe from a holding company to a platform and give creative minds the freedom to progress and thrive in this ever-changing industry,” said Sadoun.
In the demonstration, which did not allow guests to try the platform themselves, Publicis showed how employees can find relevant previous work, creative resources or subject matter experts within the global group using the Microsoft-provided AI services.
The service also offers a crowdsourcing feature, allowing teams to call on the global workforce for ideas on campaigns and projects. Employees can also bid to work on briefs posted on the service.
Currently the project is still in alpha testing stage with 100 staff trialling the system .1,000 employees will be part of the beta stage expected to launch in June. The company has told investors it expects the app to be in the hands of 90% of the group’s workforce by 2020.
“Marcel is the proof of our commitment to our people. At Publicis, we will put them first in our transformation, and give them the opportunity to learn, share and create more than anywhere else.
“Marcel is the proof of our commitment to our clients. They will be able to leverage our incredible diversity of talent to bring to life the ideas they need to grow their business,” concluded Sadoun.
Hasn’t PHD been running almost the identical product for the last 5 years?!
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Accounts:
What are these 6 hours on your timesheet with Brazil as the job number?
Staff Member:
The Brazil Office wanted to collaborate on a project through Marcel as I had experience on the client.
Accounts:
Which client?
Staff Member:
Samsung.
Accounts:
We don’t have Samsung as a client here so who do I bill?
Staff Member:
Brazil I suppose
Accounts:
…?
(2 weeks later)
Email from Finance Director to entire office:
At no point is anyone to accept a MARCEL project collaboration UNLESS it contains a Purchase Order and Approved Collaboration Budget which must be signed off by your department head and entered into the system prior to the collaboration being commenced.
(1 year later – Somewhere in the Publicis Network)
Account Manager :
Should I ramp up that MARCEL thingy and see if I can find someone to collaborate with on this.
Account Director:
(Client name) went apeshit when they saw that $900 on the invoice from the last Collaboration and I had to absorb it. Don’t need that again, (client name) still to this day keeps saying ‘if you had to go all the way to Australia to get the answers why did we award you the account?
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When AI can come up with ‘Not happy Jan’ or ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’, then the creativity/data divide is broken. Maybe.
The Marcel model seems like more efficient admin.
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Oh god, I’m getting flashbacks from WPP days where this exact scenario would play out.
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This is merely a marketing tool to put in pitches and award presentations. No intention of it being a legitimate productivity tool, same as all the other “operating platforms”
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Spot on!
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Where’s the “i”? From the video it just looks like an internal search tool
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