Publicis’ Arthur Sadoun said that despite the group hiring more than 2,300 new people in the first half of 2026 and investing heavily in AI over the past decade, it “never wanted to be an AI company.”
He added: “I don’t think we’re going to be a technology company. We’re a services company.”
Mr Sadun has been bullish on adopting a “opposite strategy” to his peers since the beginning of this year, linked to the hiring of new roles at a time when Omnicom and WPP are cutting jobs. Omnicom to combine Interpublic Group and WPP as part of Elevate28 strategy.
He spoke to Campaign after Publicis’ second-quarter results, in which the group slightly raised its full-year guidance range to 4.5% to 5% from the previous 4% to 5%. In the second quarter, the group reported a 4.8% increase in organic revenue and net revenue of 3.77 billion euros, up from 3.6 billion euros in the second quarter of 2025.
The upgrade follows a “strong” first-half performance in which the group claimed “six major wins”, with further increases expected in the second half of the year and into 2027.
Microsoft was one of those victories, as it was revealed earlier this year that it won without pitching. At the time, Sadoun told Campaign he hoped this lack of pitch would become a “trend” for the group.
Speaking after the second quarter results, Sadun emphasized that the group’s customers are in a position where they would “prefer to spend time with one partner to test their capabilities rather than make a PowerPoint pitch.”
Last month in Cannes, both Sadun and WPP chief executive Cindy Rose spoke at Campaign House on the opening day of the Cannes Festival of Creativity.
In an interview with Campaigns Editor-in-Chief Gideon Spanier, Rose said, “I think the time and materials model is over, although it may be controversial,” and explained how WPP is pursuing an outcome-based model with clients, a strategy that was key to Jaguar Land Rover’s win.
With the industry gearing up for an outcome-based model, Sadun said: “This is a model we are all looking at,” he added, but “to think we can accommodate all our clients is to ignore their reality.”
He added: “This is definitely the right direction, but it’s not the ultimate solution at this point.”
Ahead of Cannes, Publicis released a film called “False Promises,” which parodies the sales pitch process and criticizes the practice of over-promising clients.
Below, Sadun explains why he believes it is Publicis’ “duty” to produce such films, explains how the debate over identity as a means of reaching audiences is “over,” and provides an update on the LiveRamp acquisition.
Campaign: On investing in people, you’ve hired 2,385 new staff, what other ways are you investing in people to drive retention?
Sadun: We basically do two things for retention. First, we make sure our employees are properly trained, and we spend significant time, money, and investment in AI training for our employees through the Publicis PLAI program.
And secondly, we make sure we reward them appropriately. We have a very ambitious policy regarding valuable compensation and bonuses. And we always strive to make our employees feel part of our progress. We increased salaries by 7% last year.
We continue to attract what we consider to be the best talent in our industry. Depending on the needs of our clients and the type of things we are acquiring, we may be able to recruit directly from competitors or other sectors. I mean, we’ve never claimed to be an AI company. We’ve never wanted to be an AI company, and we don’t expect to be a technology company. We are a service business.
How do you maintain your talent investment strategy if you don’t see as much growth as you expected?
We have two levers: growth and decline. When the economy is doing well, growth allows us to keep jobs despite the economic pressures everyone is under. In bad times, depletion occurs. For example, during COVID-19, we didn’t lay people off because thanks to Marcel we were able to reassign jobs. we have a country model [too]This means there are no P&Ls at the country level and people can be reallocated depending on who is coming and who is leaving.
If you manage your resources well, you should be able to find the savings you need even when growth isn’t expected, while respecting the work of everyone in your company. It’s more difficult than shooting.
We expect it to accelerate further in the second half of the year, with some new businesses entering the scene. What is the basis for this acceleration belief at headquarters?
We had a very strong new business performance in the first half, which translates to 200 basis points or 300 million euros. Only two of those wins start to increase in the second half of the year. Therefore, of the 200 basis points, 50 basis points will be transferred by the second half of 2026 and 150 basis points will be transferred by 2027.
I think the industry is too focused on new business headlines. I think this is misleading. Because until your new business translates into real growth for the benefit of your employees, it’s just a press release. And it’s going to be very interesting to see what happens in the second quarter because some of our competitors have been claiming a lot of wins. It should be converted to a number. If not, it means you made a false promise.
Are there challenges in balancing the amount of wins and people’s job expectations? There are also suggestions that people may leave Publicis because of how much pressure they are under to get their work done, or because they have more clients so they have to work harder.
There’s always talk about Publicis, but the fact is that we’ve been number one in new business since 2020. This means we have already been number one for six years in a row. Since then, the number of employees has grown from 70,000 to 114,000. Thus, approximately 40,000 jobs were created. The least I can say is that we haven’t lost many people and people are pretty happy. Now there is reality [to this]. We work harder than others and it shows in our numbers. But you don’t work harder because you get new business; you get new business because you work harder.
What did you get out of Cannes? Was it a success for Publicis?
Cannes was very productive for several reasons. First, and perhaps most importantly, we conducted approximately 60 private sessions. This means over 60 clients, where we reviewed industry by industry how our model can deliver real business outcomes in 12 months. Second, a year after the win, we had this session with the CMOs of Cork and Mars. The session was attended by over 350 clients and approximately 80 investors. We had a great conversation based on the rules of Chatham House. We discussed not only the results obtained and why this was a good result, but more importantly, the challenges of transforming the marketing model. And last but not least, I think investors left with a better sense of where our industry is going.
In an opening session at Campaign House in Cannes, WPP chief executive Cindy Rhodes said she believed the time and materials model was over, and explained how WPP was moving to a more results-based model, particularly with the recent Jaguar Land Rover win. Do you agree that the industry is at the end of the days when clients pay for the time and resources used?
Outcome-based models are a very sensitive and difficult topic to navigate. We’ve been working on an outcomes-based model for 10 years at Publicis to earn a portion of our revenue. That’s the model we’re all looking at. Now, to think you can accommodate all your clients is to ignore their reality. It really depends on the model they have in place, the role they are looking for their agency to play, and their ability to actually translate their marketing investments into business outcomes. So it’s definitely the right direction, but not the ultimate solution at the moment.
In an interview at Campaign House in Cannes last month, you said that identity is the safest way to reach individuals. Could you please elaborate on what that means?
There is no longer any debate that identity marketing is not only the safest, but also the most efficient way to reach individuals. why? Because identity is a connector that allows any client or brand to connect any first-party data they have to additional data sources in a secure environment protected from the risk of leaks and data security issues. The world’s largest platforms run entirely on identity. Two players representing more than 80% of the industry’s market capitalization, Omnicom and our company, operate on identity. That ended the discussion. Clients decide, financial markets decide, and more importantly, all of the big players in this industry, aka platforms, are based on this model.
This time last year, when you spoke to Campaign at the H1 2025 earnings call, you expressed frustration with the media’s “BS” that the platform and its AI were going to eradicate the need for groups like Publicis. Has anything changed since then?
If you look at our performance in the media space, we’ve had close to double-digit growth. I think it shows very clearly that now more than ever, companies like ours have a role to play in being able to truly connect complete ecosystems through identity. Before we had media and social media platforms, now we have all the LLMs on top of that. Who will be at the center of this?
Earlier this year, when Publicis acquired Microsoft without a pitch, you said you expected it to become a trend. Has it become a trend?
Clients understand more than ever the need to have the right capabilities and the right people, and are in a position to prefer spending time with one partner to test their capabilities rather than making a PowerPoint pitch. That is the reality we are experiencing.
What’s the latest information about the LiveRamp contract?
Indeed, we have had a very positive response from our clients. Neutrality is a big theme that our competitors have come up with, but it doesn’t really matter to our clients. Because clients know that LiveRamp technology is neutral by design. We are unable to comment further while the approval process is in place, but we hope it will be completed by the end of the year.
Ahead of this year’s Cannes, you released the film False Promises, which parodies the promises agencies make to their clients with pitches about AI and its commercial offers. Why do you think it’s important to release a film like this?
We’re in an industry that’s being challenged, but one that has succeeded in the past by having a strong perspective on what’s coming. [next] In marketing. We’ve been trying to do that for a long time at Publicis. In 2017, we came to Cannes and said that AI is the future of marketing and that we were going to build a platform that empowers the workforce. We said we wouldn’t win any awards for a year to help finance it. The market mainly picked up on the fact that we weren’t coming back to Cannes, but that wasn’t the message.
The message was that AI was part of what we were going to do, which was very controversial at the time. Since then we have always tried to come [to Cannes] With meaningful topics. When we announced a few years ago that we were going to “take the BS out of AI,” 18 months later, MIT said that 95% of AI pilots are pilots. [in companies] It was failing. As industry leaders, we believe we have an obligation to suggest things that can make our industry better.
False promises made in sales pitches, especially when maximizing AI, do not help our industry and do not help our clients. You’d be surprised how many emails we receive [from] Our competitors appreciate us putting this on the table and calling it out.
If you weren’t the market leader, would you still be releasing movies like this?
It’s mandatory now, but when Marcel said AI was going to be the future of the industry, we were in third place. We care about our industry. a lot. And we value our employees. The least we can say is that we [showing that] every day. And if we all have to be in the same place for a week and chat about our industry, we shouldn’t let the latest gossip or the latest press release fool us into believing we’ve won something big. It has to be about real issues that we need to address.
This article first appeared on Campaign UK.
