MAM
Publicis Groupe names Scott Hagedorn and Sam Levine Archer to lead Marcel
Hagedorn becomes chief executive officer and Levine Archer chief strategy officer of the agentic activation platform, in newly created roles
PARIS: Publicis Groupe is putting two of its AI architects in charge of Marcel. The company has appointed Scott Hagedorn chief executive officer and Sam Levine Archer chief strategy officer of Marcel, its agentic activation platform.
In these newly created roles, Hagedorn and Levine Archer will lead the expansion of Marcel and its portfolio of agentic growth solutions, combining Publicis’ proprietary data, technology and expertise to help clients accelerate business growth.
Marcel has come a long way. Originally launched in 2017 as the industry’s first AI platform connecting Publicis’ people, knowledge and capabilities, it has evolved into a key part of the Groupe’s AI-powered marketing model. Today it draws on an expanding library of thousands of agentic skills developed by Publicis’ 114,000 talents, and combines the Groupe’s proprietary data and technology with the collective intelligence and expertise of its people to create agentic solutions built around each client’s business.
By connecting enterprise, consumer and marketing intelligence to action, Marcel moves beyond workflow automation. Its agents and skills identify new opportunities, make smarter decisions and accelerate measurable business growth.
The two are not newcomers. Over the past four years, Hagedorn and Levine Archer have played a central role in Publicis’ data and AI transformation, as chief solutions architect and chief solutions officer respectively. They helped develop the products and services that differentiate the Groupe’s offering and deliver measurable results for clients.
Building on that, and alongside their existing responsibilities, they will now expand Marcel’s offering in areas including influencer and creator marketing, sports and culture, content intelligence, and AEO and GEO. Their focus will be on a new generation of agentic growth solutions that help clients reach and engage consumers in new ways, unlock new business opportunities and drive measurable growth.
To get there, they will draw on the combined capabilities of Publicis Sapient, Epsilon and Lotame. These connect clients’ enterprise, consumer and marketing intelligence with the ability to activate it across channels and platforms, delivering solutions tailored to each business while ensuring clients retain ownership and control of their data.
Carla Serrano, global chief strategy officer of Publicis Groupe, said: “The next frontier of AI isn’t about making existing workflows faster. It’s about creating sources of growth that weren’t possible before. Today, Marcel brings together the unmatched data, technology and human talent of Publicis to build specialised agents, unlocking spaces beyond the reach of standalone AI platforms. Now, with Scott and Sam at the helm, we’re taking this further, developing a new generation of secure agentic growth solutions across dynamic marketing levers like social, influencer, LLM and earned, passion-points like sports and live experiences, and AI-powered discovery and commerce to unleash new opportunities for our clients and for Publicis.”
Hagedorn, chief executive officer of Marcel, added: “Anyone can build an agent. What matters is what it knows, how it thinks and what it can deliver. Through Marcel, our people around the world are turning their expertise into agentic skills on behalf of their clients. Connected to our proprietary identity graph, these agents understand real consumers, not just data points. And because Marcel routes every task to the model best suited to do it, our clients are never tied to a single LLM. They always get the best of AI, grounded in intelligence that’s uniquely theirs.”
Three things stand out. First, the elevation. Marcel began in 2017 and is now described by Publicis as a key part of its AI-powered marketing model. Giving it its own chief executive officer and chief strategy officer, in newly created roles, shows how central the Groupe thinks it has become.
Second, the choice of people. Hagedorn and Levine Archer have spent four years in the Groupe’s data and AI transformation, which means they come to the job with the products, the data and the client relationships already in hand. They keep their existing responsibilities alongside the new ones, so the link between Marcel and the wider business stays close.
Third, the pitch. Publicis is selling control and choice. Clients, it says, keep ownership and control of their data, and Marcel routes every task to the model best suited to do it, so they are not tied to a single large language model (LLM). Serrano’s remarks about going beyond workflows and into new growth areas such as influencer, sports and AI-powered discovery show where the Groupe wants Marcel to compete.
