Publicis Conseil Wins Cannes Lions Agency of the Year 2025

Publicis Conseil has been named Agency of the Year at the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, marking the second consecutive year the Paris-based shop has taken home one of the festival’s top honors.

The recognition reflects the breadth of its creative output—18 Lions and 46 shortlists—and its growing influence on the global stage.

Founded nearly a century ago in Montmartre by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, Publicis Conseil helped define the DNA of modern French advertising and laid the foundation for Publicis Groupe, now valued at over $28 billion.

The agency also earned the 2024 Agency of the Year title on the back of campaigns like Renault’s “Cars to Work” and “The Climb,” a sustainability-driven ad featuring a mountain made up of more than 120 crushed vehicles.

Publicis Conseil’s consecutive wins at Cannes Lions affirm both its creative legacy and continued relevance in the industry. “It expresses very well the consistency and the profoundness of what we are doing,” Agathe Bousquet, president of Leo and Publicis Groupe France, told ADWEEK. “It shows something deeper: that we will never stop fighting for creative excellence, that it’s at the heart of everything we care about.”

A breakthrough campaign that swept Cannes

At the heart of the agency’s winning year was AXA’s “Three Words,” a campaign that redefined home insurance in France by adding domestic violence to AXA’s emergency relocation clause.

The initiative earned three Grand Prix—Titanium, Direct, and Creative Business Transformation—making it the most awarded French campaign at this year’s festival. It also picked up two Gold, four Silver, and one Bronze Lions, with two additional PR Lions going to Publicis Consultants for its supporting communications.

The Titanium Grand Prix marked a historic milestone as the first ever awarded to a French agency.

Launched in April, “Three Words” has already rolled out across France and is set to expand to Italy, with additional markets including the U.K., Ireland, Spain, and Japan under consideration.

Beyond AXA, Publicis Conseil was honored for work with Renault (two Gold, two Silver, one Bronze), Orange (one Silver, one Bronze), and Nescafé (one Bronze).

“Our obsession is to turn everything into a standard of excellence,” said Marco Venturelli, CEO and CCO of Publicis Conseil. “It’s important that we won two years in a row because it shows the standard of excellence.”

He added, “On a human level, it shows that we care a lot.”