The Power of One Approach: Advantages of the New Agency Business Model

On September 27, Publicis Communications creative agencies and Publicis Media media agencies of the French communications holding company Publicis Groupe held ‘The Power of One’ closed conference in the DI Telegraph space in Moscow, Russia. The conference partners were: IMHO Digital Sales House, Gazprom-Media Digital, LBL, Hearst Shkulev Media, Mail.ru Group, LENTA.RU (RAMBLER&Co Group), GAZETA.RU (RAMBLER&Co Group), ALLEN MEDIA, Happy Monday Family and Timeout Moscow.

Publicis Groupe presented a new approach to accumulating all market expertise within one holding group, forming optimal project teams and offering solutions more quickly. More than 600 of the group’s clients and partners attended the event, and speakers from the UK, France and the Middle East were specially invited to the conference. Representatives of major advertising platforms were among the speakers: Facebook, Google, Mail.ru.

Technology has changed the concept of service, consumer behavior and marketing today. In order to lead this tidal wave of change, Publicis Groupe has radically transformed itself – the holding group has been turned into a flexible, modular and dynamic platform. 

Yulia Arakelova, Chief Strategic Officer at Publicis Communications Russia, offered proof of why the model had to be changed. She showed a film of interviews with the marketing directors of top advertisers about issues in modern communications, agency relations and the future of the industry. 

Yulia Udovenko, Business Transformation Director, and Dragorad Knezi, Disruption Evangelist at Publicis Communications Russia, talked about how companies are changing services and consumers needs. They also discussed marketing’s ‘magic push button’ on the market. 

Jeff Chalmers and Tatyana Maslova, Chief Operating Officers at Publicis Media and Publicis Communications Russia, presented a response to the rapidly changing reality. They talked about the Groupe’s new approach, called The Power of One, and said that now the Groupe had all the expertise available on the market today, without exception.

The group then presented its new products and practices. Artem Korolev, Data Scientist at Publicis Media Russia, spoke about how Publicis Groupe uses artificial intelligence technologies to analyze brand target audiences. 

Irina Kozlova, Development Director at Performics, and Dmitry Inozemtsev, Content Director at Performics, talked about the new approach to SEO developed by Publicis Media. 

Amin Rafinejad from Prodigious, part of the French division of Publicis Groupe, talked about how their production was transformed into a unified platform able to quickly prepare content for all the clients’ objectives and make it multi-channel right away, and Jim Kite from Publicis London presented his NextTechNow project, which connects startups with large companies for mutually beneficial projects.   

Representatives of major advertising platforms attending the conference talked about the change in their ecosystems: Dmitry Sergeev from Mail.ru Group, Ilya Alexeev from Facebook, Yury Dolzhenko from Google, and Alexander Ivanov from Rambler&Co. 

The conference wasn’t only theoretic – you could also test some products right there. You could chat with a robot with a facial recognition system, go on a VR quest and view VR brand case studies. 

Publicis Groupe launched its fundamental restructuring process in January of last year. A month before this, Maurice Lévy, then-CEO of Publicis Groupe, announced the change in the business model. The holding was previously based on a multi-divisional structure with international networks of agencies, but the large number of levels became barriers. Therefore, it was decided to organize key disciplines into four hubs: Publicis Communications — creative, Publicis Media — media, Publicis HealthCare — pharmaceutical marketing, Publicis Sapient — technologies. This changed the structure from a pyramid to a horizontal and integrated one, with the client at the center, who gains quick access to all of the holding’s expertise. The new approach was given the name The Power of One.