It’s not lost on Publicis that they are essentially using AI to point out the BS in AI. “It’s very meta,” said Serrano.
The inspiration for the campaign came about after Davos, where all the heavy conversations were about the power of AI with nothing backing up the hype. Publicis decided to dig in and have its versions of AI be of use to clients rather than just high-tech parlor tricks.
The tech
Once clients have used the bot, they will be invited to one of 20 closed-door sessions at Cannes that suits their AI needs.
“Through our closed-door sessions, we will set out exactly how we can deliver that, through CoreAI, to accelerate our clients’ business and marketing transformation. But don’t tell the bot I said that,” Sadoun joked.
Serrano thinks this is the right time to have frank conversations about AI, and Cannes is the right setting for those conversations. Publicis has long touted its view that it’s a tech leader, and even launched a Marcel anniversary campaign last year at Cannes to celebrate its AI platform. This year, it is announcing expanded AI services.
Publicis looked at key verticals—CPG, automotive, automotive, financial services, pharma and luxury—and put together teams of strategists, data scientists and analysts, paired with Sapient development teams and Epsilon data teams. Then, they looked at how they could help the industry through machine learning, using Sapient, Bodhi and AI. The teams then built three apps across those five verticals, which is what Publicis is debuting in Cannes.
“We’ve already built the data models, and they’re all trained on the best data. They’re not recreating SaaS to do generative AI content and outputs, they’re more engineered for business outcomes and lift,” explained Scott Hagedorn, global chief solutions architect at Publicis.
Publicis has uploaded a massive amount of data into its infrastructure, with 2.3 billion records globally from Epsilon, Sapient’s entire knowledge graph and all the data from Marcel. They integrated it with all the retail data from CitrusAd and Profitero, along with performance data from its media operating system, as well as having made specific syndicated data deals across all the different verticals, with Circana and Experian Automotive and others to enrich the data sets.