Publicis Groupe is a Frenchmultinationaladvertising and public relations company, and is the oldest and one of the largest marketing and communications companies in the world, by revenue, headquartered in Paris. After 1945, the little-known Paris-based advertising agency grew rapidly, becoming the world's fourth-largest agency. It was a leader in promoting France's post-war economic boom, especially the expansion of the advertising industry; it was successful because of its close ties with top officials of the French government, its clever use of symbols to promote itself, and its ability to attract clients from widely diverse growing industries. It is one of the "Big Four" agency companies, alongside WPP, Interpublic and Omnicom. Publicis Groupe S.A. is headed by Arthur Sadoun, and its agencies provide digital and traditional advertising, media services and marketing services to national and multinational clients.
History
The company was founded by 20 year old Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet in 1926. In 2011, Publicis was named the third-largest marketing group worldwide by revenue, surpassing Interpublic. By the end of 2010, the twin sectors of digital activities and high-growth emerging countries represented one-half of Publicis Groupe's total revenue. The group had operations in over 202 cities in 105 countries, including a strategic alliance with Dentsu. In July 2013 it was announced that Publicis Groupe and Omnicom Group would merge to form Publicis Omnicom Group, but by May 2014 it was announced that the deal had fallen through and the Publicis-Omnicom merger would not happen. In February 2015, Publicis acquired Sapient Corporation to form Publicis.Sapient as the world's largest digital network, which at the time included SapientNitro, Sapient Consulting, DigitasLBI and RazorfishGlobal. In December 2015, Publicis announced a new organisation into 4 main divisions:
Publicis Communications under the leadership of Arthur Sadoun;
Publicis Media under the leadership of Steve King;
Publicis.Sapient under the leadership of Alan Herrick;
Publicis Healthcare, already in existence, will remain under the leadership of Nick Colucci.
In addition, Laura Desmond became Chief Revenue Officer, leading a team of 20 Chief Client Officers who would lead client teams across all Publicis Groupe entities. The new organisation was to be effective 1 January 2016. Since 2016, Publicis has co-organised, with Groupe Les Echos, the annual technology conference, Viva Technology. On January 21 2019, Publicis announced the deal to sell two of their Latinamerican agencies, NovaDigitas and Pixeldigital to BancroftX to form a new marketing firm under the group umbrella BancroftX. On April 14 2019, Publicis announced a $4.4 billion deal to acquire data marketing firm Epsilon. On February 4 2020, Publicis Groupe India announced the merging of existing agencies - Arc Worldwide, Solutions and Ecosys OOH, to create ‘Publicis In-Motion’.
Operations
The company owns several full-service advertising groups that undertake a range of media activities: mobile and interactive online communication, television, magazines & newspapers, cinema and radio, outdoor. The company's SAMS services include direct marketing/customer relationship management services, sales promotion, healthcare communications, multicultural and ethnic communications, corporate and financial communications, human resource infrastructure, public relations, design services, interactive communications, events marketing and management, sports marketing, and production and pre-press services. Its media services include media planning, media buying, and media sales. Publicis Groupe's Vivaki developed a technological platform supported by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and AOLPlatform A technologies that offers advertisers the possibility to target specifically defined audiences in a single campaign across multiple networks.
Controversies
, a U.S. subsidiary of Publicis, has represented the country of Saudi Arabia since the September 11 attacks and has been accused of helping to whitewash its record on human rights. More recently, the writer Ken Klippenstein obtained leaked documents from Qorvis, which show the PR company pitched a private company on a four to five minute propaganda video, which hoped to improve the reputation of its Homestead, Florida shelter for "unaccompanied alien children."
