- Havas will invest 400 million euros, or greater than $429 million, over the following 4 years to support data, tech and artificial intelligence (AI) development and meet clients’ needs for cross-functional, integrated communications solutions, the corporate announced last week.
- The holding company also announced a recent global operating system that will likely be modeled after its existing Converged media tool, which uses AI to supply transparent, cross-platform audience planning. The recent OS will roll out over the approaching months and reach across all of Havas’ networks and areas of experience.
- The investment will likely be supported by a Global Task Force as Havas looks to the opportunity of going public within the future.
Havas is the most recent holding company to speculate heavily in AI because it looks ahead to marketing’s future, following similar moves by WPP and Publicis Groupe — which have each said they are going to dedicate upwards of $300 million a yr for the following few years in AI and tech investments.
For Havas, the goal is to enable a more integrated end-to-end client experience as marketer demand grows for ways to create, produce and distribute real-time optimized, personalized and meaningful content at scale. Accordingly, it would appoint a world chief client officer.
“We are constructing a model that’s future-thought, agnostic by way of data and tech partnerships and perfectly interoperable with our clients’ systems, to satisfy their needs much more swiftly and cost-effectively,” said Yannick Bolloré, chairman and CEO of Havas, in a press release. “Havas Converged is a collective journey, because it marks an extra acceleration in our growth journey.”
Havas has delivered strong revenue growth of late. The investment and Converged model are a part of an overall technique to spin off Havas from its current parent, Vivendi, and develop into a publicly traded company. Vivendi acquired the holding company in 2017.
The investment in technology builds on the Together Strategy and a Village approach launched by Havas in 2014. The recent Converged model is designed to foster greater global collaboration through the use of data, technology and AI to fuse talent, capabilities, platforms and expertise, per press details.
The expansion of the Converged model beyond media is meant to enable all 23,000 Havas employees across departments to work together to create integrated and sustainable solutions following 4 steps of the client journey: intelligence, design, activation and measurement
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