Through a powerful alchemy of creativity and technology, Publicis Groupe drives business transformation across an entire organisation. Based on market capitalisation, Publicis Groupe is currently the most valuable marketing and communications group in the world. In 2023, it outperformed the industry both in Australia and globally for the fourth year running, delivering 5.3% organic growth.

In Australia and New Zealand, it is the only holding company that can provide true end-to-end advertising, marketing, and digital business solutions for clients through its ‘Connected Platform’ of companies and capabilities. These include award-winning agency brands Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett, Digitas, Zenith, Starcom, Epsilon, Spark Foundry, Publicis Sapient, Balance, Herd MSL, Salterbaxter, Prodigious and Razorfish.

The success of this ‘Connected Platform’ model is made possible by the company’s unique commercial structure, having a single country P&L and Groupe ANZ CEO. This is a key advantage for the business as it removes all agency brand silos, ensuring true collaboration to unlock exponential growth for clients. In a year that saw flat or negative growth among key competitors, the strength of this model resulted in Publicis Groupe achieving positive growth. The unique model has translated to tangible successes for the company, with Publicis ANZ welcoming several major new clients in 2023, including Superloop, Nine Network, TPG and Microsoft, while maintaining an impressive retention rate of existing clients.

Not only are its agencies being appointed to work on major brands, but clients are also increasingly working with multiple Publicis agencies to see supercharged benefits around growth, creativity, and capability. Publicis calls this the ‘Multiplier Effect’, which benefits both clients and the Groupe business. Clients working with multiple agencies include Arnott’s, Toyota, Westpac, Pfizer, and Subway.

Publicis’ business strategy works in concert with its people strategy and is focused on three key areas: ‘Growth, Magic, and Connection’. These pillars form the basis of the Publicis Groupe ethos, ‘Viva La Différence’, which expresses how the business values each individual and celebrates differences in identity, background, culture and experience. The ethos is embedded into its operations through competitive paid leave policies; its flexible working launched prior to the pandemic, and policies around internal mobility and mental and physical wellbeing.

To acknowledge people’s differing beliefs and religions, Publicis offers flexible working for some public holidays, permitting people to switch a public holiday day for another date that is important to them. Meanwhile, its ‘Work Your World’ initiative allows employees to work from any city worldwide with a Publicis office for up to six weeks each year.

For Publicis, wellbeing is more than just about tackling mental health – focusing on prevention alongside treatment. In 2023, the Groupe has continued its partnership with Sonder, an all-in-one digital wellbeing technology platform accredited by the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS). Publicis has a Gold Standard Accreditation from Mental Health First Aid Australia, and currently has 90 trained Mental Health First Aiders.

As part of Publicis Groupe’s ‘Towards Net Zero’ climate strategy, it launched the Écologique employee resource group in 2023, focused on driving sustainable practices across ANZ in support of the organisation’s global target to reach net zero by 2040. Together with its EnABLE employee committee, dedicated to people with visible and non-visible disabilities, Publicis ANZ launched its first Disability Access & Inclusion Plan in 2024.

Publicis Groupe’s ‘Working with Cancer’ initiative aims to rally the world’s most influential companies to build supportive, recovery-forward workplaces for employees living and/or supporting someone with cancer. In 2024, Publicis Australia partnered with the Cancer Council to make a meaningful impact by bringing the ‘Working with Cancer’ pledge to workplaces across the country.

In ANZ, the company’s constantly evolving learning and development (L&D) program aims to provide staff with the right tools to foster connection while accelerating their individual learning. It offers Publicis employees opportunities to expand their knowledge and collaborate with peers across the world through its AI-powered employee platform, Marcel.

Publicis’ goal is to take the ‘Connected Platform’ model it has built and evolve it into an ‘Intelligent System’- a system designed with intuition and growth at its nexus for its people and clients – completed by the company’s 100th anniversary in 2026. As part of this transformation to become an ‘Intelligent System,’ their CoreAI platform will connect the knowledge of the entire enterprise through AI—making it accessible to its more than 100,000 employees. This includes a suite of new proprietary AI tools aimed at streamlining workflows.

Publicis also operates under a rigorous compensation framework with salary grading based on internal and external benchmarking. The company regularly reviews its reward, recognition and compensation framework to remain competitive and boost employee loyalty. This includes providing opportunities for employees to offer feedback through bi-annual global engagement surveys that benchmark against Groupe’s offices worldwide.

For information about Publicis Groupe, visit publicisgroupeanz.com