Publicis: 100 years of looking to the future

As Publicis Groupe prepares to enter its second century, the global communications powerhouse is celebrating 100 years of transformation with a campaign that blends history, creativity, and cutting-edge technology.

Founded in 1926 as a small creative agency in Montmartre by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, Publicis has grown into one of the world’s largest advertising and marketing groups. Over the decades, it has expanded internationally, embraced data-driven strategies, and built a powerful technological infrastructure without ever losing sight of the creative spirit that defined its origins.

One tradition has remained steadfast throughout these changes: the annual New Year Wishes. For this milestone edition ushering in a new century for the Groupe, Publicis Conseil, the original agency created by its founder, was entrusted with bringing the project to life.

This year’s Wishes take the form of a hybrid production combining live action, real actors, and advanced AI tools from Publicis’ proprietary platforms. The film revisits the many challenges the Groupe has overcome -war, fire, economic crises, technological upheavals, and a global pandemic - and highlights the pioneering mindset and resilience that have enabled Publicis to continuously reinvent itself.

The symbol at the heart of the story is the Groupe’s iconic lion, an emblem of perseverance and renewal. Discover the story of the lion that never gives up HERE

The agency also launched an exclusive documentary tracing 100 years of Publicis history. The documentary features key voices including Elizabeth Badinter, Maurice Lévy, and Arthur Sadoun. Click HERE to watch the documentary

Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe, reflected on the significance of the moment:

“2026 will be a very special year for us, as we end our first century—a century where we turned a small hot shop from Montmartre into the industry’s largest holding company over the last two years. A century that has seen the Groupe rise from the ashes—sometimes literally—three times and reinvent itself many more.

It is this spirit of resilience that has defined us for 100 years and that is captured in our Wishes: a lion never gives up.”

Looking ahead, Sadoun emphasized that Publicis’ second century will be shaped by the accelerating rise of artificial intelligence.

“This film is a human, historical, and technological odyssey that blends our best creative minds with our unmatched capabilities in AI production, embodying our belief that the future of AI is our people.”

With this centennial celebration, Publicis Groupe sets the tone for the decades ahead: honouring a century of reinvention while boldly embracing the technologies and creative possibilities that will define its next chapter.

About the film :

A unique ‘hybrid' project

‘A Lion Never Gives Up’ blends live action, GenAI 2D & 3D imaging to reconstitute scenes from our past, reducing the price of scene reconstruction and opening up new creative possibilities.

A quarter of the film is live action footage, with the rest created by AI, drawing on photos, films and documents from Publicis’ own archives.

A huge volume of visual assets

AI prompt artists and AI archivists managed, sourced and catalogued both the volume of real images needed for a project of this size - 4,500 for 150 individual shots - and the AI-generated ones.

A reinvented editing process:

In a traditional pipeline, once you reach the editing stage, everything is locked in. Here, everything remained open: each shot could be regenerated from scratch.