Publicis Groupe 'Wishes for 2024' features AI-powered personalised messages

Publicis has harnessed AI in its annual Wishes films to send a personalised thank-you message to each individual employee.

 

The network has created 100,000 films, fronted by Arthur Sadoun, Publicis Groupe chief executive, tailored to each employee’s interests as well as their languages.

 

All of the films open with Sadoun addressing the camera, thanking the employee for their contribution to Publicis’ achievements in 2023, such as organic growth and hitting financial KPIs.

 

He goes on to say how he wanted to send everyone a personal message but finance said it was not possible. He is then interrupted by his AI twin.

 

The AI twin thanks each person individually by naming them and inviting their boss to take part in their message of gratitude.

 

Publicis used its platform Marcel to source information about each person so their thank-you video included references to their hobbies and interests.

 

For example, one film sees an AI version of Carla Serrano, Publicis Groupe’s chief strategy officer, thanking Eva, a sport-loving group managing partner in Austria, while taking part in mountaineering, a tennis match and ballet.

 

Other films feature an AI version of Maurice Lévy, chairman of the supervisory board of Publicis Groupe, wakeboarding, skydiving and throwing a lasso.

 

 

The 2024 Wishes films have been in development since September last year, with around 100 people working on the project.

 

They were created by Le Truc, in partnership with Prodigious.

 

Andy Bird, founding partner and chief creative officer of Le Truc, told Campaign that Publicis had to record 30 minutes of each person speaking in order for the technology to recreate their voices as well as their likeness. Parts of the script were also created using ChatGPT.

 

Bird said acceleration of the technology was fast and it would be an addition to the industry’s human creativity.

 

He added that AI will not take people’s jobs and it will actually make people’s jobs better. He acknowledged the importance of human creativity. “You need the creative mindset to understand it, direct it and to edit it,” he said, describing times where they saw versions of the Wishes films that weren’t up to scratch.

 

 

Serrano said aspects of AI have been a gift to the industry, with the likes of Midjourney being used to create storyboards at the conceptual stage.

 

“We're working with AI to help our clients become faster in terms of production and versioning,” Serrano said. “Every single client's utopia is personalised content at scale for all their prospects and customers.

 

“AI would certainly help that. If we can do it for 100,000 people, and we can get that muscle going, it's a very good start for our people to be trained on what we believe is going to be the future of content creation and production.”

 

 

Last year's film focused on HPV-related cancer and featured a guest appearance by actor and film producer Michael Douglas.

 

The film stressed the importance of the vaccine and encouraged people who haven’t already been vaccinated to protect themselves from HPV.