—The messages feature Arthur Sadoun’s AI twin and a wakeboarding Maurice Lévy.—
By Charlotte Rawlings
Publicis has harnessed AI for its annual "Wishes" film to send a personalized 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 twin thanks each person individually by naming them and inviting their boss to take part in their message of gratitude.
Publicis used its Marcel platform to source information about each staff member so their thank-you video included references to their hobbies and interests.
For example, one film features 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, with around 100 people working on the project. They were created by animation studio 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 so the technology could recreate their voice as well as their likeness. Parts of the script were also created using ChatGPT.
Bird said the technology was accelerating quickly and would be used as an addition to the industry’s human creativity.
He added that AI would not take people’s jobs but would make people’s jobs better. Acknowledging the importance of human creativity, Bird said: “You need the creative mindset to understand it, direct it and to edit it,” describing times when they saw versions of the Wishes films that were not 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 personalized 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 in 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.
This article originally appeared at Campaign UK.
