Publicis Entrusts Its Marcel AI Platform to Scott Hagedorn and Sam Levine Archer
On October 22, 2026, Publicis Groupe appointed Scott Hagedorn and Sam Levine Archer to lead Marcel, its agentic activation platform. These are newly created positions that the two executives will hold in parallel with their current responsibilities within the group.
Two Architects of Data and AI Transformation Take the Helm of Marcel
Scott Hagedorn has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Marcel, and Sam Levine Archer Chief Strategy Officer of the platform. The announcement was made in Paris on October 22, 2026.
Over the past four years, the two executives have respectively served as Chief Solutions Architect and Chief Solutions Officer. According to the group, they have played a central role in Publicis' transformation in terms of data and artificial intelligence, and contributed to the development of its products and services.
They retain their existing responsibilities in addition to these new functions.
A Roadmap Centered on Influence, Sports, and AI-Powered Search
Launched in 2017, Marcel relies on a library of several thousand agentic skills developed by the group's 114,000 employees. The two executives will be tasked with expanding its offering to influencer and creator marketing, sports and culture, content analysis, as well as AEO and GEO.
To achieve this, they will mobilize the combined capabilities of Publicis Sapient, Epsilon, and Lotame. The group emphasizes that clients retain ownership and control of their data.
"Anyone can build an agent. What matters is what it knows, how it reasons, and what it can produce," said Scott Hagedorn, stressing that Marcel directs each task toward the most appropriate model, ensuring that clients are never locked into a single LLM. For Carla Serrano, Chief Strategy Officer of Publicis Groupe, the next phase of AI involves "creating sources of growth that were not previously possible."
