The Groupe does not believe that it is dependent on any specific patent or license to operate its businesses.
R&D within Publicis Groupe has always taken an applied form, as it is directly linked to the search for concrete technological solutions designed to help our clients, to developing and improving the performance of our products, technological platforms or internal tools, and to taking advantage of the latest technological advances to offer new options to our clients. Several PhD students work within the Groupe, most of them at Publicis Sapient and Epsilon.
Epsilon’s R&D efforts are underpinned by a culture and investments that promote continuous innovation, grounded in academic discipline, in order to accelerate the deployment of solutions for clients. Its 3,000 engineers are active in designing new solutions, testing them, improving them and deploying them for more than 700 clients. Data scientists work to optimize and refine the performance of algorithms, with the goal of achieving the highest possible accuracy and efficiency.
Every year, Epsilon organizes an internal hackathon and tech conference designed to rally all of its engineers over a short period to work on prototypes of new AI features that will be integrated into the PeopleCloud platform. Finally, looking to the future and knowledge sharing, a specific program hosts 15 PhD students for one year, who are monitored and mentored by the Decision Science teams.
Publicis Sapient has developed three major AI products: Slingshot, Bodhi, and Sustain, which are constantly being improved and are helping clients achieve exceptional results. The seven “Labs” in North America, Europe, India and Latin America are centers of technical expertise to respond in real time to clients’ technological issues. Publicis Sapient also organizes several Hackathons throughout the year to promote innovation – some tailored to specific clients, some focused on improving the delivery of client solutions, and others aimed at enhancing internal work processes. These key moments also help build internal capacity and a collaborative culture, while helping junior practitioners develop new skills.
To stay ahead of technological developments, several strategic partnerships have been established with key technology providers, enabling us to certify numerous teams and collaborate on a number of pilot projects.
Lastly, the Groupe’s Media activities invest significant resources in mathematical and statistical processing in order to best advise their clients in their media choices (particularly in terms of modelling the marketing mix or calculating the effectiveness of media actions), and many doctoral students are also part of these teams.
