mie, with his status as specified worker, Arthur Sadoun has never stopped flying between France and the United States, a country he has been piloting live for two years. Normal, for the chairman of the board of Publicis, which has nearly half of its troops across the Atlantic, or 35,000 people, and two large hubs, in Chicago and New York. Certainly, but not only: during the lockdown, the world number three in communication was also on very big “pitches”, the putting into play of advertising budgets. Automotive, distribution, food… The United States remains the world’s leading advertising market. No question of giving up the land to the “locals”.
Enthusiastic scholarship
Effort paid off: over the past three months, Publicis has won the media strategy of Meta (Facebook) and Walmart, the titan of distribution in the midst of digital transformation, two budgets each estimated at $ 1 billion in investments. The highlight of a great series of gains across the Atlantic. At the end of October, CVS drugstores entrusted him with its creation and its customer relationship. A few days earlier, the Chinese TikTok repatriated its new campaign to Le Truc, the group’s young New York entity.
Last year, the awakening of the American market made it possible to limit the damage in the midst of the pandemic: 9.8 billion in net income and 841 million in profits. Today the United States – 60% of net income – drives growth. Enough to allow the Frenchy, during the quarterly results in mid-October, to announce 8 to 9% organic growth in 2021, 2 points more than this summer. The Stock Exchange believes in it: Publicis immediately rose as the sector’s leading market capitalization, to 14.5 billion euros. “Everything indicates that the group is living more than a simple post-Covid rebound”, greets the Berenberg bank. “Publicis is fully benefiting from the American recovery and strong customer demand in digital transformation,” adds an Alphavalue analyst.
Publicis… is it America? “In any case, this is where our model, unique, is expressed the best for the moment”, concedes his boss. The model? For fifteen years, the French have struggled to marry their historical know-how, media strategy and advertising creation, to the digital desiderata of the customer. A shift initiated by Maurice Lévy, Arthur Sadoun’s predecessor, with the acquisition of online advertising agencies (Digitas, Razorfish, etc.), followed in 2015 by Sapient, a specialist in user experience engineering. A first tool to conquer new budgets, such as that of Lloyd’s Bank in 2017, which included the redesign of the website, among other things to reduce the time it takes to open an account. Very far from the job of “creating” a TV spot …
Power of data
“At the controls, I was content to add a stage to the rocket,” says Arthur Sadoun, deceptively modest. The addition is significant: Publicis aligned $ 4.4 billion in 2019 to buy Epsilon, the pope of data personalization, the hobbyist of customers obsessed with the power of platforms and the omnichannel. The biggest redemption in its history and, in the unanimous opinion, the founding act of the Sadoun presidency. “With the end of third-party cookies, customers are asking for proprietary data. Especially in retail, where these players will invest more tomorrow on e-commerce platforms, Carrefour.fr or other, than on television,” says- he. And to slip: “Today, given the boom, Epsilon would no longer be within our reach.”
Read alsoBy buying Epsilon, Publicis wants to make gold with its customers’ data
In the United States alone, according to a February Goldman Sachs study, digital media investments in consumer goods will rise from $ 15 billion in 2016 to $ 42 billion in 2024. The ratio climbs from 28% to 75% of the overall envelope. A change that Publicis must follow, under penalty of being knocked out by the kings of the council. Three years ago, the Stock Exchange bet on a takeover of Publicis by Accenture … The group now employs 18,000 engineers. For Walmart, the Sapient-Epsilon hitch was decisive. “With Epsilon and its 255 million consumer profiles, they were able to identify 98% of their customers and even enrich their attributes, when competitors barely reached 50%,” says one competitor. For this budget, as for Heineken or Samsung, Publicis has created a tailor-made agency, Department W, in New York. Up to 600 employees will work there: creatives from Fallon, engineers from Sapient, planners from Zenith …
DES BUDGETS BORN IN USA (Estimation en dollars)
November 2021 Facebook (1 billion).
October 2021 CVS (NC).
September 2021 Planet Fitness (200 million).
August 2021 Walmart (1 billion).
January 2021 Samsung US (600 million).
October 2019 Disney (2.2 billion, shared with Omnicom).
Synergy of countries
Department W also illustrates the new organization, pompously named Power of One. No more business silos, the group is joining forces to grow by country, “so that the creative of Leo Burnett has as much interest in making Epsilon grow as the engineer who works there, and vice versa”, says Arthur Sadoun. In 2019, he deployed the Marcel platform (M.RC.L), connecting 80,000 employees, to discuss more, or even work on projects far from home. All studies, job offers, and training modules are there. In the midst of Covid, a real accelerator, Marcel served to reallocate forces according to projects and geographic needs. “We have saved thousands of jobs,” assures the boss of Publicis, who has inflicted a savings plan of 500 million euros and has posted 8,000 net hires since the start of the year.
“The latest figures prove the merits of the reorganization. The synergies between Epsilon and the other businesses are working, summarizes the Alphavalue analyst. The next step: to optimize the activity outside North America, in pressing Epsilon. ” For this, and after the 8 billion dollars for Epsilon and Sapient, Publicis does not rule out small acquisitions. This summer, he took over the Australian retail media platform CitrusAds (50% revenue in the United States). He also wants to grow in advanced TV, expertise outside of old linear TV. Until then, there are still big pitches – Coca-Cola, for example, puts everything in play. Even refreshed, the stock market has not returned to its level of 2017. Arthur Sadoun has not finished taking the plane.
A boss at the top of the bill
He took the job… and some gray hair, a competitor laughs. “Arthur”, third boss since the creation of Publicis, has he (finally) earned his stripes? When he succeeded Maurice Lévy in 2017, the advertising agency model was at its worst. Platforms are breaking the market, and even oracle Martin Sorrell (ex-WPP) predicts the death of the industry. The Stock Exchange is all the more skeptical as the group, after its failed merger with Omnicom in 2014, is accumulating poor performance. The takeover of Epsilon, a game of poker, is completed just before the pandemic. Not ideal for digesting a business of 4 billion and 9,000 employees. With his mentor, Sadoun shares a taste for sweets, an anti-pub look and a reputation for being a highly demanding workaholic, internally, it is said, without limits. There is never time to rest on its laurels: “Good times or bad, I am as serene as I am worried,” said this five-year-old in a hurry. Publicis must stay one step ahead. Alexandre Bompard, his sidekick at Carrefour, made him join his council.
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