India can be the next Brazil: Bruno Bertelli, Global CEO LePub, CCO Publicis Worldwide

In an in-depth interaction with IMPACT Magazine at Cannes Lions 2024, Bruno Bertelli, Global CEO LePub, CCO Publicis Worldwide, talks about why he wants young creative leaders across the world to specialise in AI, and how he expects their nominations to fare at Cannes Lions 2024, among other things. He has words of advice for the Publicis WW leadership in India, which incidentally hasn’t sent any entries to Cannes Lions this year, while elaborating why he believes they should be less regional and more international in their approach here.  

Excerpts:

How is Cannes 2024 looking for you and what are your expectations?

Our expectations are always high. I am expecting to win a few awards and also looking forward to some inspiring speeches while making sure there’s a little fun too. 

What work of yours are you rooting for this year, which perhaps has a shot at the Grand Prix?

There’s this interesting Heineken project down in Ireland called ‘Pub Museums’. It is basically about turning old pubs into museums, so that these places continue to stay alive with the government’s assistance.  

Le Pub is a premium agency, with a model quite different from Publicis Worldwide. Could you tell us more about it and how soon do you plan to bring it to India? 

Le Pub is a very premium agency that works with a few big names. Embracing an international approach with a special focus on strategy, we try to make brands and position them relevantly in a culture. And yes, India is growing for sure, and all the clients I speak to, plan to focus on India. There is a chance of taking Le Pub to India, but not at the moment.

Heineken has been a longstanding partner for Publicis. And it's very rare in this day and age for an agency to have a two-decade old relationship. What is the secret sauce for this successful partnership?

It’s about understanding not only the brand but also the business, therefore, we always try to identify and solve the business issues. The communication solutions that we bring to the table are problem solvers to the business part. We go from market to market, with focus on big markets. We have Le Pub in Brazil as it’s one of the biggest markets, and now we also have it in Singapore for APAC. I am sure India will be a key market for Heineken in the coming years. Let’s see what will happen in India. 

Which are the brands in India that have your attention?

At the moment, Desperados is quite huge in India, so there's an idea to develop it there. I also work with Mondelez and we have Oreo in India. These would be our top focus. 

Everyone across the world is talking about artificial intelligence. According to you, is it a facilitator or a job snatcher?

Basically, it's a tool, just like post-production. It’s all about understanding the technicalities to brief it correctly. It depends on how good we are at briefing the AI. AI won’t steal our jobs, but will help us go faster about things, in presentations as well as content production. I would advise the young creatives to specialise in AI because that will be required by the agencies. Currently, we don’t have many creatives who can work with AI. 

During a press briefing at Cannes, it was mentioned that there’s now a requirement to disclose whether AI was used in creating a campaign. Surprisingly, more than 12-13% of respondents confirmed that they had incorporated AI. This indicates that AI is increasingly becoming a significant tool in the industry. Do you utilise AI in the majority of your work? If so, how do you integrate it into your processes?

At the moment, I use AI a lot for presentations. We have already done a couple of films using AI, and even some voice recordings. But I feel that this usage is very limited and a lot can be done. One issue regarding AI that we still have to work on is creating distinctive voices as all them sound similar

What would be your advice to the Indian leadership at Publicis Worldwide? 

I think that India is becoming very attractive for global brands. Therefore, my advice to the Indian leadership would be to take on an international approach, and focus less on the regional insights and trends. We should have a bigger scale there because India can be the next Brazil.