How Publicis Groupe is going beyond the marketing department to drive creative business transformation

The AI revolution has brought the ad business to an interesting crossroads.

Clients today have never had more tools and technology at their fingertips, potentially taking over many of the roles that used to be the domain of their agency partners. Yet there is an interesting juxtaposition: they have never needed more expertise to help navigate a marketing chain that is evolving at a breakneck space.

To transform at the speed of the APAC market, Publicis Groupe Asia-Pacific established an executive committee (ExCo) focused on creative transformation, led by Michael Rebelo, CEO of Publicis Groupe Australia and New Zealand, as its Chair.

The committee’s first task was to build a framework to guide the organisation’s approach to AI across a wide and diverse region, empowering agencies to focus on their real edge: championing creative business transformation by embedding creativity within clients’ business processes, not just communications.

Building for creative business transformation

Publicis Groupe anticipated this shift in marketing almost a decade back and realised that the first transformation had to be internal. Describing the changes, Rebelo says it involved three strategic bets: putting data and technology at the Groupe’s core; implementing a country model to deliver solutions tailored to each client; and building a single operational backbone. “This has set us up perfectly for the transformation currently sweeping through search, production, media, commerce, and influencer marketing.”

A critical component has been stepping away from one-size-fits-all solutions. Rebelo says, “Our strength lies in the combination of scale and specialisation. Our creative agencies are supported by deep expertise across media, data, CRM, commerce, and influence. This enables us to be problem-fit, not just market-fit, shaping solutions around each client’s unique needs and delivering value beyond output.”

Rebelo too has embraced new ways of thinking, leveraging his years of experience in diverse geographies including ANZ, Vietnam, Singapore, and the UK. He says, “Staying open to new perspectives helps unlock more meaningful and effective ways to lead. Our APAC creative transformation executive committee exists to evolve our creative practice with AI so that we lead the future direction of our business and are not shaped by it.”

Going beyond making a ‘series of ads’

Publicis Groupe APAC is stepping past traditional mandates within client organisations. Rebelo explains, “Going beyond the marketing department to align with wider stakeholders is a big part of the art and science of creative business transformation. Game-changing ideas have consistently shaped our creative output at Publicis Groupe APAC. We achieve them by partnering different teams in our client organisations to deliver ideas that permeate throughout their business.”

The metrics of success are thus not a creative platform or an efficient media plan, but connected, sustained impact—ensuring that a message, product, or behaviour change works seamlessly across channels, devices, and experiences. Rebelo says, “It involves taking a long-term view of a client’s business, regardless of the engagement scope, understanding the full picture, and delivering tangible, measurable outcomes linked to business goals."

The solutions emerging from Publicis Groupe point to creative business transformation being more than just a philosophy.

Australia-based insurance provider Suncorp has built its identity around resilience. But rather than remain an advertising tagline, Leo Australia has found ways to embed resilience into Suncorp’s corporate strategy.

For the One House campaign, the agency designed a home that could withstand the extreme weather in Australia including fires, floods, and storms. Rather than being a solitary prototype, the materials and architectural advances are now being incorporated into actual housing projects.

The recently launched Haven provides every Australian with an AI-based overview of the environmental threats facing their homes and suggestions to mitigate the risk.

Rebelo says, “Five years on, resilience is impacting everything from a rise in people asking for resilient features in their builds, to Suncorp’s investment in a disaster management centre. This was never about making a series of ads. We are looking for new ways to drive impact.”

Partnerships with relevant experts is an essential aspect of creative business transformation. For Lay’s Smart Farm, Leo India partnered with local agritech firm Cropin to help PepsiCo India predict potato yields with greater accuracy, leading to a more streamlined supply chain and climate smart decisions for its flagship Lay’s chips.

Leo India CEO Amitesh Rao believes collaborations are a powerful fuel for transformational creative solutions. Leo India launched Apollo 11, to enable such partnerships, a specialist innovation lab that employs engineers, data scientists, and artists.

Even when it comes to recognition, Publicis Groupe has shifted focus to awards like Effies that acknowledge business impact rather than those that view creativity as an end goal. Leo India is the number one creative agency in the world for effectiveness in the 2025 WARC Effectiveness 100.

How an agile mindset and AI are fuelling creative business transformation

To maintain the impetus behind these initiatives, Publicis Groupe has instilled the ‘adaptive gene’ as a concept within teams. “It lets us unite them culturally while allowing freedom in the creative process. We fuse world-class creative with data, culture, and technology to deliver more connected and transformative ideas,” says Rebelo.

The adaptive mindset is supported by Publicis Groupe’s Power of One connected platform of capabilities, Marcel, and the company's country model approach. This operational framework empowers markets within APAC to play to their strengths while tapping into the broader network’s capabilities when necessary. Rebelo says, “It allows for autonomy without isolation, and collaboration without compromise.”

Beyond partnerships between geographies, being adaptive has been especially useful while incorporating AI into workflows. Publicis Groupe has a clear framework to guide its embrace of AI while providing simplicity and clarity for clients, staff, and business. Rebelo says, “Since beginning our AI transformation, Publicis has remained committed to augmenting and not replacing human talent.” A cross-functional team of creatives, technologists, HR professionals, and business leaders have developed a framework called Human X + - (Human X, Plus, Minus).

Human X + - represents the next evolution at Publicis Groupe: from holding company to connected platform of capabilities to an intelligent system. Human X represents excellence driven by humans but supported by technology; Human + a collaboration between humans and AI; and Human - primarily AI-automated work supervised by humans.

Taken in conjunction with Publicis Groupe’s progressive stance on learning and development, Rebelo believes the network benefits from a compounding effect, which puts the creative transformation ExCo in a strong position for tackling its next challenge: addressing the pressures on the creative agency model and the shifting role of creativity.

As Chair of the APAC committee, Rebelo is optimistic: “These issues demand transparency from leaders, but they also create an opportunity to redefine the value agencies deliver beyond traditional renumeration models, which is ultimately a positive for our industry. It is also about recognising and rewarding the talent that thrives in this model: those who embrace collaboration, agility, and the fusion of creativity with technology.”