Who's Gonna Guard Marcel?

Publicis ceo Arthur Sadoun made big headlines last week with his announcement that he's taking the $20 million they piss away at Cannes every year and sinking it into an artificial intelligence gimmick called Marcel.

The goal of this AI system is to connect all 80,000 of Publicis' employees for the purpose of universal access to information and collaboration. You can learn about it on this video cliché-fest.

According to Chip Register, co-CEO of Publicis.Sapient...

"In a group of 80,000 people ... how can we assemble that team and allow that team to work and collaborate virtually to bring the best ideas and values we can to a client at a moment's notice?...The use of technology enables great creative work. It enables the connectivity of people... It enables teams to work and it enables ideas to generate, be shared globally and virtually, through the use of better insight in culture and the journey of human beings."

Let's forget the "human journey" horseshit for a minute and talk about the practical use of Marcel.

We know that digital security is a cruel joke. We know that hackers have gotten into White House systems, CIA systems, and just about any system they want to hack.

What I want to know is, how is Publicis going to protect the ideas and information accessible through Marcel from every hacker and every rival agency and marketing entity on the planet?

But let's give Publicis the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that they have better cyber security than the White House. How about the internal issues?

Let's say Publicis is pitching Coca-Cola or General Motors or Unilever or any large global brand. Do they really expect us to believe that they are going to put essential brand strategy, creative work, and media ideas into a system that can be accessed by 80,000 people all over the globe?

Do they really want to tempt some intern or junior planner with Marcel access to sell critical information to a rival agency?

If they're not going to put essential information into the Marcel system, what use is it? How can it enable "ideas to generate, be shared globally and virtually" if they're not, um, shared globally and virtually?

And how about their current clients? Do they really think their clients are going to want proprietary information they give to Publicis to be within reach of 80,000 employees, any one of whom may skip to a rival agency or rival brand tomorrow?

But if they don't put proprietary info into the system, how can they possibly "assemble that team and allow that team to work and collaborate virtually to bring the best ideas and values we can to a client at a moment's notice?"

No company in its right mind puts sensitive, critical, or proprietary information into an email. The same will be true of Marcel.

One of the key attributes clients expect from an agency is mature and discrete handling of confidential information. Not an 80,000 person circle jerk.

When the dual imperatives of protecting confidential information and providing essential security dawn on Publicis, they will discover that Marcel is destined to become not much more than a massively expensive and technologically elegant next gen version of a conference call.

Update:
In an amazing timing coincidence, I posted this last night and WPP got hit with a crippling hack attack this morning.