2019 was a pivotal year for the Group with the acquisition of Epsilon, the marketing Big Data specialist. Epsilon has the technology and platforms to structure client first-party data, round it out with an incomparably diverse range of data sources and put together personalized campaigns at scale.
By positioning Epsilon as the data expert of the Groupe, Publicis draws on this wealth of resources for all its business activities turning it into a key, differentiating advantage. Now more than ever, our activities are resolutely positioned to the future with more than 30% of our net revenue generated by data and digital business transformation.
But that’s not all: Publicis is also reshaping its organization over time to meet the needs of clients for streamlined and efficient access to the range of expertise on offer in the Groupe. We have also realigned our operations, organizing them by country to leverage synergies between areas of expertise and to discover novel solutions. The Power of One strategy, initiated in 2016 as an integrated working model providing even more benefits to clients, is now fully up and running. Through the Groupe Client Leader, clients are offered a tailored service and direct access to the Groupe’s entire range of expertise. We help our clients to constantly innovate and grow their sales, while controlling costs.
2019 saw Publicis round off its transformation in terms of both assets and structure, placing it in a unique position to serve clients across the entire value chain. The only group to have large-scale creative, media, data and technology assets, Publicis has a clear competitive edge—demonstrated by the new account wins in 2018 and 2019. For the second year in a row, the Groupe topped the league tables for winning new accounts and secured contracts in the biggest global tenders for existing or new clients (Disney, Beiersdorf, Axa and Novartis).
2020 will be marked by the global Covid-19 pandemic, which affected all countries and sectors of activity for most of the year. This major health crisis resulted in one of the biggest economic crises in recent history. The measures taken by the various governments to contain this pandemic, such as lockdowns, have had a sudden and unprecedented impact on consumption and production.
Certain trends, already visible in the communications and media industry, have thus been greatly accelerated. This is notably the case for the growth of digital, with a significant development in e-commerce and direct-to-consumer. The transformation that Publicis Groupe had initiated several years earlier enabled it to best meet the needs of its clients to navigate alongside them in the crisis, define strategies to overcome it, accelerate their digital transformation, and build direct links with their consumers.
At the same time, the Groupe has taken important operational decisions to preserve its talent. The rollout of Marcel, the Groupe’s artificial intelligence platform, has thus been accelerated to meet the requirements of new working methods and enable better sharing, even remotely. Marcel has acted as a way of bringing teams together and proved to be a valuable tool during such a period.
In order to contain the financial impacts of this pandemic, the Groupe quickly faced up to the situation and put a number of strong measures in place, such as the implementation of a cost savings plan of euro 500 million and a reduction of 50% in the dividend initially proposed.
In this context, the Groupe managed to deliver solid results thanks to the transformation undertaken several years ago, posting organic growth of -6.3%, an operating margin rate of 16.0%, and free cash flow before change in working capital of nearly euro 1.2 billion. Several factors were decisive in the Groupe’s performance: the Groupe’s investment in data and technology, with the acquisitions of Sapient and then Epsilon; its country organization, which enabled it to support its clients as closely as possible at each stage of the crisis and to provide a complete offer combining data, technology, media and creativity in an integrated manner; and its Marcel platform, which enabled the Groupe to adapt and act quickly by allocating resources efficiently. In 2020, the Groupe continued to win new business and strengthen its partnerships with many clients, including Bank of America, GSK, Heineken, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Reckitt Benckiser and Visa.
