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.
Hasn’t PHD been running almost the identical product for the last 5 years?!
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?
Oh god, I’m getting flashbacks from WPP days where this exact scenario would play out.
Spot on!
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.
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”
Where’s the “i”? From the video it just looks like an internal search tool