Publicis Groupe has appointed Scott Hagedorn as Chief Executive Officer and Sam Levine Archer as Chief Strategy Officer of Marcel, its agentic activation platform. The roles are newly created, and both executives will keep their existing responsibilities while taking on the wider AI mandate.
What the new roles cover
Hagedorn and Levine Archer previously served as Chief Solutions Architect and Chief Solutions Officer respectively, helping drive Publicis Groupe’s data and AI transformation over the past four years. Their new brief is to expand Marcel and its portfolio of agentic growth solutions, using the group’s proprietary data, technology and expertise to help clients find opportunities and deliver measurable outcomes.
The expanded remit includes several areas where marketing is being reshaped:
- Influencer and creator marketing
- Sports, culture and live experiences
- Content intelligence
- Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation
Marcel will draw on the combined capabilities of Publicis Sapient, Epsilon and Lotame to connect enterprise, consumer and marketing intelligence with activation across channels. Publicis Groupe says clients will retain ownership and control of their data.
From workflow efficiency to new growth
Marcel launched in 2017 as an AI platform designed to connect Publicis Groupe’s people, knowledge and capabilities. It has since become central to the group’s AI-powered marketing model, with thousands of agentic skills built by its 114,000 employees.
Carla Serrano, Global Chief Strategy Officer at Publicis Groupe, framed the shift in strategic terms. “The next frontier of AI isn’t about making existing workflows faster. It’s about creating sources of growth that weren’t possible before,” she said.
Hagedorn offered a similar test for the technology. “Anyone can build an agent. What matters is what it knows, how it thinks and what it can deliver,” he said.
What marketers should watch
According to Hagedorn, Marcel’s agents are connected to a proprietary identity graph so they can understand actual consumers rather than isolated data points. The platform also routes tasks to the AI model best suited to each requirement, avoiding dependence on a single large language model.
For marketing teams, the signal is clear: agentic AI should be judged on growth outcomes rather than automation alone. That means connecting agents to first-party data, staying model-agnostic, and keeping control of customer data.
Source: MediaNews4U
