In the marketing world, it's often said that content is key. That's why I've come to this venue in East London to find out what Publicis Sapiens is up to. Hello and welcome to Marketing Media Money. I'm Tanya Bryer and I've come to an evening event organized by the digital consulting firm Publicis Sapiens. It's being held at a historic venue in East London. An invited crowd from wide-ranging industries come together for drinks, nibbles and of course networking. There's a lot to see and do. There's a special display featuring stories from employees showing the effect that technology had on their lives. There's also a 360 cam for the perfect shot and there's even an in-house muralist. We'll be speaking with the artist later in the show. But the main event of the evening is a screening of a new film by the Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot.
A mother's job is never done. We give our last even though it is our last. Everything was going stable and the pandemic hit.
Never Done is the first of three films in a series funded by Publicis Sapiens. They're being made in partnership with Ben Proudfoot and his company Breakwater Studios. Unusually there's no branding in the films. Instead they're designed to showcase the positive way in which digitalization can change someone's life. The internet is a beautiful thing. That theme runs throughout this evening's event. Those employee stories I mentioned, they describe ways in which their lives have been transformed by technology. It's clearly an important theme. I sat down with the CEO of Publicis Sapiens, Nigel Vaz. Nigel, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for joining me on Marketing Media Money.
Thank you for having me.
Publicis Sapiens describes itself as a digital transformation partner. Tell me what that means and what you do.
Very simply, digital business transformation is the reimagination of business for a world that is increasingly digital. So many of our clients have built successful businesses and industries from banking to airlines to hotels. And in every one of these industries, the impact of changing consumer behavior, technological change means these businesses need to be reimagined for a world that we live in today. So for our clients, we're constantly helping them stay on top of consumer trends, changing technology trends in order to transform themselves. And that means helping build platform-based business models for somebody that might actually be a hotel company in order to tap the market and compete with an Airbnb. It might be helping a large media company compete with a Netflix. It might be actually thinking about the end-to-end travel experience in the context of an airline or asking obvious questions like, why do you have to go into a bank to open a bank account? Or why do you need a piece of plastic to get money out of an ATM machine?
Well, the company is part of the publicist group. What is the ecosystem like? How do you fit into it?
From a publicist perspective, publicist has been in the communication space in advertising and marketing for nearly 100 years. And their whole model has been about how brands and consumers connect. Now, Publicist Sapient as a company has always been focused on the kind of impact we're creating for consumers in the digital space. So if you think about brands building relationships with consumers today on one dimension, focused on marketing and communications, Publicist Sapient helps bring that brand promise to life through everything we do. So our focus on ultimately what is the impact to the consumer. So if you take a simple example, like somebody like McDonald's, we do from a publicist perspective, a lot of the advertising and the marketing for McDonald's. But on the other side, how do you actually place an order? How do you actually make sure that your order is getting processed? How do you actually get people to food faster in the context of a drive-through, but also get food to people faster with the integration that McDonald's did with Uber Eats? So now Publicist can play across the spectrum from advertising and marketing all the way through to how consumers and businesses actually deliver on that brand promise.
Nigel, you've been with the company for over 20 years now. So how has it changed since it's joined?
Well, if you think about Publicist Sapient, Sapient was a company that was founded in Cambridge in Massachusetts with the primary purpose of how businesses back then were going to leverage the internet. We were helping launch some of the world's first online banks, some of the world's first online retail businesses. And fast forward to today, we're helping build digital cities. We're helping transform new ways in which banks create value for customers. We're focused on creating virtual experiences that allow much more immersive delivery of healthcare. We're using technology to create better choices for companies in the context of carbon emissions. And all of these, to me, ultimately come back to those same ideas that we've always had, which is the purpose of the company has always been about how people can thrive in the next and how that translates to us delivering really impactful solutions to them through everything we do.
What kind of spending allocation are you seeing from companies towards digital strategies?
Back in the day, we'd say a CEO might have digital as one of the top 10 priorities. If you're a retailer, they would talk about e-commerce sales. Today, it's just sales. So today, it doesn't matter whether you're focused on sustainability. It doesn't matter if you're focused on other ESG priorities, if you're trying to drive costs out of your business, trying to be more efficient or find growth. Every one of those has a huge digital component, which effectively means digital business transformation in the truest sense is almost the number one or number two priority for every CEO I talk to across industries. Because whatever their strategic priority, the avenue to get at that is reimagining the business in a digital context.
We'll have more with Nigel in just a bit. But first, we've got to take a quick break. Coming up, I speak to Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot.
The subject was something we mutually agreed on, right? But I said, you know, I need autonomy. It was a huge leap of faith that I was requesting of them.
Plus, we hear from Publicis Sapient CMO, Teresa Barriera. Stay with us on Marketing Media Money. Welcome back to Marketing Media Money and our look into how brands make content. In this case, it's a series of documentary films by Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot. Publicis Sapient might have commissioned the content, but Ben insists he wouldn't have taken the job if they had any influence.
This is an important point for me as a documentary filmmaker, right? Because, you know, like a journalist, you, you know, you need your independence, right? It's our reputation to be objective storytellers. So, obviously, you know, the subject was something we mutually agreed on, right? But I said, you know, I need autonomy basically between going and making the film and we can't have anybody on set and we need to edit the films ourselves. So, it was a huge leap of faith that I was requesting of them. And if we didn't have that relationship, I don't, we wouldn't have done it. But I think that's why the film comes across so well is because we made it as filmmakers, you know, and not as an advertisement, which is why I think it's so powerful. My dad, he taught me, where there's a will, there's a way. And I'm going to find it.
Ben's documentary tells the story of Kirsten, a single mother from Charlotte, North Carolina, who was diagnosed with a lung disease. She was saved from homelessness by a digital platform that Publicis Sapient built for its client, rental assistance agency, Dream Key Partners.
The minute I started talking to her on the phone, she's obviously a great storyteller and she had me laughing, which is important, I think, in a story that can be kind of heavy, you know. And that really jumped out to me to begin with. But the other big thing was that it was literally one day between her being evicted and staying in her home with her children. And so, when we were sort of looking at the larger question of like, did this process turning digital actually make a difference for anyone, you can see that in her case, literally it was one day. If the process was any less efficient, her family would be homeless.
At the screening in East London, the film was a hit.
To find out why the film was greenlit from a corporate point of view, I spoke to the CMO of Publicis Sapient, Teresa Barrera. Teresa, thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you for having me here.
Why is it so important, do you think, to tell this story?
One of the reasons I wanted to do this, I wanted to show the humanity in technology and digital transformation. And I also wanted to show the meaning of our work. I wanted to show that technology is a force for good. And technology is the enabler, not the enemy. And that digital business transformation is not just about big business helping big business, but ultimately is in the service of sapient because of course you're showing the film and you have other events here. What does it take to put on something like this? I think today will be the 25th screening globally we've done. So really excited to sort of end the journey and the roadshow here in London with a big bang. When I started this journey was to show again the impact that we are making in people's lives to show the goodness in technology. But the biggest surprise is actually been our employees how they embrace this. And what this film has created that I could never imagine is giving people a platform. When we do the screenings we had a conversation about impact. The impact they are making in their personal impact and the impact in their jobs. And it's been such an amazing thing to see how people have come together. The film has united us. The film has gave people pride to show you know what they are doing as really has an effect in people's lives. And that to me to be honest it's been the most beautiful thing.
How has technology impacted your own life?
I grew up in a small village in the northern part of Portugal. A town of a thousand people. Most people live from the land. My parents were small business owners. They own a restaurant, a cafe, a grocery store. And by the time I was six years old I started working their business. I didn't have technology then. Not even a cash register. I learned how to do mental math. But I immigrated to the United States and I went to university and business school. But if I think about it I didn't grow up with technology but technology really has in some way shaped me to where I am today. Allowed me to do what I do. My first job out of business school was with IBM and that's when I started getting really introduced to technology and started to see the benefit of technology. And obviously today I don't think I could work or live without technology.
Teresa thank you so much for joining me on Marketing Media Money today.
Thank you it was a pleasure.
You have your own story of impact Nigel. I believe you've talked about being diagnosed at an early age with dyspraxia and then saying that you've described technology as giving you superpowers.
So I you know as a kid I had really a hard time with fine motor skills which effectively meant so dysgraphia is the inability to move things to create which as a kid you know it means an inability to hold a pen or a pencil I still have terrible handwriting. You know but technology and computers allowed me to go from a kid that was perhaps starting to get bucketed in the realms of not being so bright which was common when I was growing up because I couldn't express myself in written form to all of a sudden being able to expand my horizons and contribute very differently. And I was surrounded at the time by comic book heroes like Batman and Iron Man and Captain America and all of them were regular people but who were augmented by technology. So it really cemented in my head that technology could be a force for good which is also why I was saying you know it's slightly disheartening sometimes when so much of the conversation in the media around tech firms gets boxed in one area of what technology does which is social media. You know it's just a very narrow spectrum but today technology is changing how we go to space it's changing how we discover new drugs it's changing how people receive life-saving health care it's changing genetic discoveries and space exploration and undersea exploration and so much of that is not talked about as the impact that technology has had. So for me on a very personal level I do believe in Publicis Sapient we're trying to create a company that is very focused on how we can be a force for good in the world leveraging those speed capabilities I talked about.
Nigel thank you so much for talking to me today.
Thank you for having me I really appreciate it.
Sadly that's all we have time for for this episode of Marketing Media Money for more go to cnbc.com I'm Tanya Brier thank you so much for watching.