Publicis Realigns Digital Assets With Biz Transformation & Scale In Mind

Publicis Groupe has embarked on three new initiatives to enhance its offerings in marketing and business transformation.

The group has created Publicis Spine, which will fuse all of Publicis Groupe’s data assets, technology, and talent, to strengthen the company’s proposition to drive and link both marketing transformation and digital business transformation. Spine encompasses three core components.

a. Unified data matching of first, second and third party sources to create unique IDs, which inform when, where and how to engage consumers and with what message.

b. PeopleCloud, a cloud-based platform that uses data to identify sources of client growth at the individual level. This end-to-end platform combines behavioral and semantic intelligence to inform media and creative decision making, activation, and dynamic measurement.

c. The collective power of 3,500 engineers, analysts, and strategists from across Publicis Groupe into one centralized data and analytics team who will help clients turn data into business insight.

Lisa Donohue will serve as CEO of Publicis Spine. Ms Donohue most recently served as Starcom Global Brand President. She will be succeeded in the Starcom role by John Sheehy, formerly President, Global Clients for Publicis Media.

Jason Kodish, currently Global Chief Data Scientist at DigitasLBi, will serve as Chief Data Officer of Publicis Spine, and Steve Simpson, who currently runs Publicis Media’s global analytics and insight practice, will serve as President of PeopleCloud, with both reporting to Ms Donohue. She will report to Arthur Sadoun, Chairman & CEO of Publicis Groupe and Steve King, CEO, Publicis Media, and Publicis Groupe Directoire member. Mr Sheehy will report to Mr King.

Publicis Groupe will also organize its digital business transformation assets within Publicis.Sapient into industry practice verticals. Nigel Vaz will lead digital business transformation efforts for Publicis Groupe, in addition to continuing in his role as CEO of Publicis.Sapient EMEA and APAC. He will be responsible for overseeing the digital business transformation industry practice leaders and delivery teams to ensure that these transversal capabilities work seamlessly to help clients reinvent both their business and their category.

Publicis Groupe is also aligning DigitasLBi within Publicis Media and reporting to Mr King. This alignment, gives DigitasLBi, an agency hybrid of creativity, media, data and technology, seamless access to additional scalable data and media resources. Michael Kahn will serve as Global President of DigitasLBi, a role that he takes on from Mr Vaz. Mr Kahn, a digital native, spent the early part of his career at ecommerce startups, before joining Performics in 2005, ascending to the role of Performics Global Brand President and growing the agency to 57 markets worldwide.

David Gould, previously Chief Delivery Officer of Performics, will take on Performics Global Brand President duties, succeeding Mr Kahn in this role.

“These moves are the natural next steps in the development of our model, further strengthening capability on both the marketing and business transformation fronts and, importantly, closely interconnecting them, fueled by all of our data expertise,” said Mr Sadoun.

“In today’s world, brand is the experience and the experience is the brand. These capabilities will help us unlock that potential for clients, catalyzing their reinvention and growth, and creating a better experience for consumers,” said Mr King.

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