AI news · Publicis · Marcel
Publicis names a CEO for Marcel, its AI agent platform
Marcel, the AI platform Publicis uses to build agents for more than 90 clients, now has its own chief executive and strategy chief.
Publicis Groupe gave Marcel, its in-house AI platform, a leadership team of its own on 26 October 2026. Scott Hagedorn becomes Marcel’s first chief executive and Sam Levine Archer its chief strategy officer, and both keep their current group roles, Adweek reports. Adweek counts more than 90 clients with AI agents built in Marcel, a 400-person operation used by thousands of Publicis staff. It began in 2017 as an internal tool.
Their brief covers four areas, Marketing Dive reports: AI search (getting brands named in chatbot answers), sport, culture and creator marketing. Marcel draws on data from Epsilon, Lotame and Publicis Sapient. The $2.2 billion LiveRamp deal, still being finalised, is meant to make those client agents smarter, Publicis says.
Our own count shows which AI names buyers bring up. Of 460 posts about AI on Reddit’s r/PPC forum in the year to 23 September 2026, ChatGPT is named in 119 and Claude in 64. Motion, Madgicx and Foreplay appear in none, per our list of AI tools for media buyers.
Buyers on that forum talk about general assistants far more than about ad tools, so an agency platform like Marcel, sold as client agents built on Publicis’s own data, competes first with the chatbots media buyers already talk about.
Sources
- Adweek: Marcel Gets its First CEO as Publicis Competes With Off-the-Shelf AI. Checked
- Marketing Dive: Publicis installs leadership atop Marcel as agentic drives growth plans. Checked
Alexandre S.
Alexandre S. is a creative ad strategist and copywriter with ten years' experience in digital marketing across multiple channels.