Publicis Groupe Bets on a Century of Resilience to Welcome 2026
Publicis Groupe's 'The Lion That Never Gives Up' is a hybrid live-action and AI-produced film released in France in December 2025 by Publicis Conseil, created as the Groupe's annual New Year Wishes to mark the approaching centenary of a holding company founded in Montmartre in 1926.
The campaign arrives at a singular moment in the Groupe's history. Publicis Groupe was founded in 1926 by Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet as a creative agency in the Montmartre district of Paris, according to publicisgroupe.com. Nearly a century later, that same founding address frames the narrative of a film designed to bridge the organisation's origins with its ambitions as it enters what Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO, describes as its second century. Released on December 4, 2025, and produced by Prodigious Paris under the creative direction of Publicis Conseil, the film forms part of an unbroken annual Wishes tradition — one that now carries the weight of a centennial milestone.
The production technique is itself a statement of strategic intent. Approximately one quarter of the film is live action featuring real actors, while the remainder was constructed using generative AI, drawing on both 2D and 3D imaging and archival material from across the Groupe's hundred-year history, as reported by publicisgroupe.com and shots.net. The result is a visual odyssey that moves through war, economic crisis, technological disruption, and global pandemic — each moment a chapter in the resilience the lion symbol has come to represent. In France, where the Groupe's creative identity was formed and where the film was published, the campaign functions simultaneously as institutional memory and forward declaration, positioning Publicis Groupe as it prepares to enter 2026 and the opening era of artificial intelligence at scale. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 79 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and production innovation set against the particular challenges of agency self-promotion at centennial scale.
Publicis Groupe's annual Wishes film serves a purpose no conventional media buy can replicate. The Wishes tradition functions as the Groupe's most direct act of brand authorship — a moment each year when the holding company speaks in its own voice, to its own industry, about its own identity. For 2025 and the transition into 2026, that voice carries a centennial charge, and Publicis Conseil was chosen precisely because it is the agency built directly by founder Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, giving the creative origin a lineage that no other network within the Groupe could claim with the same authenticity, as noted by publicisgroupe.com.
The strategic tension at the heart of agency self-promotion is well understood across the industry. Publicis Groupe competes directly with WPP and Omnicom Group for holding-company primacy in global media and creative services. According to adranking.co.uk, major agency-group billings reached approximately a combined figure handled by six large groups in 2025. In that environment, a centennial Wishes film is not merely ceremonial — it is a competitive signal. Where WPP has leaned into transformation narratives rooted in technology investment, and where Omnicom Group has pursued scale through announced consolidation activity, Publicis Groupe's chosen register is one of historic resilience paired with AI-native capability, according to publicisgroupe.com. The lion — the Groupe's enduring symbol — becomes the through-line for that argument.
The strategic choice to blend AI production tools from the Groupe's own proprietary platforms with live-action craft is equally deliberate. In France, where the creative industry holds authorship and craft in particularly high regard, a film that deploys generative AI without displacing human actors or archival authenticity allows Publicis Groupe to position itself as neither resistant to AI nor uncritically dependent on it. As Arthur Sadoun stated in the Publicis Groupe press release dated December 5, 2025, the campaign was designed to embody the belief that the future of AI is the Groupe's people — a formulation that turns a technology argument into a talent argument, precisely the distinction a holding company competing for creative leadership needs to make.
Publicis Conseil constructed the film as a deliberate hybrid of production registers. The creative execution opens from the founding streets of Montmartre and moves through a century of the Groupe's history using a combination of real actors, archival imagery, and generative AI production — a workflow made possible by proprietary platforms developed within Publicis Groupe itself, as reported by publicisgroupe.com and shots.net.
The production was delivered by Prodigious Paris, the Groupe's own production company, which served as producer on the project. Production credits for the directorial role on 'The Lion That Never Gives Up' are not fully detailed in publicly available documentation, though publicisgroupe.com and campaignbriefasia.com confirm the Publicis Conseil and Prodigious Paris partnership as the creative and production axis for the film. The use of Prodigious Paris is itself a creative statement: by keeping production inside the Groupe's own infrastructure, Publicis Conseil demonstrates the end-to-end capability that Arthur Sadoun has consistently argued distinguishes Publicis Groupe from holding company competitors who rely more heavily on external production relationships.
Approximately three quarters of the film's visual content was generated using AI tools, according to publicisgroupe.com, with 2D and 3D generative imaging used to reconstruct historical periods and events that no archival footage could adequately represent. The remaining live-action quarter grounds the film in physical performance, giving the AI-generated sequences a human anchor that prevents the work from reading as a technology demonstration alone. The result is a film that moves between eras with the quality of a prestige documentary and the ambition of a brand manifesto. In France, where the Groupe's centennial story is most legible to the audience most likely to receive it — industry peers, clients, prospective talent, and press — the craft choices land as both creative argument and proof of capability. The lion motif, sustained throughout, gives the film an emotional grammar that transcends the institutional subject matter.
The film reached a substantial verified audience. According to Huguesrey Wordpress, 'The Lion That Never Gives Up' recorded approximately 4,668,121 views following its release, a figure that places it among the more widely circulated agency self-promotion films in the French market for the 2025 cycle. For a campaign published in France and directed primarily at an industry and professional audience rather than a mass consumer base, that view count represents meaningful organic distribution across LinkedIn and Publicis Groupe's owned channels, as reported by linkedin.com and publicisgroupe.com.
No independent third-party campaign effectiveness metrics — such as brand lift studies, earned media value assessments, or sentiment analysis — are publicly available for this campaign at the time of writing. What the available data does confirm is that the film achieved distribution well beyond the Groupe's immediate network, which for an agency self-promo piece produced in France and anchored to a centennial narrative is a structurally sound result. The hybrid AI and live-action production technique attracted coverage from shots.net and campaignbriefasia.com, extending the campaign's reach into trade press audiences across markets beyond France.
Structurally, the campaign succeeds on the terms most relevant to its objectives. It gives Publicis Groupe a durable centennial artefact, demonstrates proprietary AI production capability in a visible and emotionally resonant context, and reaffirms the Groupe's founding identity in Montmartre at the precise moment when the industry's attention to AI threatens to decouple technology companies from the creative heritage that distinguishes established agency groups. The Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100 reflects that structural effectiveness — strong creative intent, credible production innovation, and clear strategic purpose, with room for greater measurable audience impact beyond the professional sector in France and internationally.
'The Lion That Never Gives Up' is Publicis Groupe's annual New Year Wishes film for 2026, created by Publicis Conseil and released in France in December 2025. The film marks the Groupe's approaching centenary, blending live-action footage with generative AI production to trace a hundred years of resilience since the founding of the agency in Montmartre in 1926.
Publicis Conseil is the agency founded directly by Publicis Groupe's original creator, Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet. According to publicisgroupe.com, this lineage made Publicis Conseil the natural choice to tell the centennial story, giving the 2025 Wishes film an authorial connection to the Groupe's founding identity in Montmartre that no other network agency could claim with equivalent authenticity.
Approximately three quarters of the film was created using generative AI tools, including 2D and 3D imaging, sourced from Publicis Groupe's own proprietary platforms, as reported by publicisgroupe.com. The remaining quarter comprises live-action footage featuring real actors. Prodigious Paris served as the film's producer, keeping the entire production within the Groupe's own infrastructure.
The film recorded approximately 4,668,121 views following its December 2025 release, according to huguesrey.wordpress.com. For a campaign published in France and aimed primarily at a professional and industry audience rather than mass consumers, this figure reflects strong organic distribution across LinkedIn and Publicis Groupe's owned channels, as confirmed by linkedin.com and publicisgroupe.com.
The lion is Publicis Groupe's enduring corporate symbol, and in this film it serves as the emotional thread connecting a century of resilience. As Arthur Sadoun stated in the Publicis Groupe press release of December 5, 2025, the spirit of resilience has defined the Groupe for a hundred years, and the campaign's title phrase — a lion never gives up — captures that identity directly.
'The Lion That Never Gives Up' received a Clapboard Score of 79 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative ambition, credible AI production innovation, and clear strategic purpose as an agency self-promotion piece marking Publicis Groupe's centenary in France, while acknowledging scope for broader measurable audience impact beyond the professional sector.
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