MARCEL – Designing an AI Platform to Connect 80,000+ Employees Across Publicis Groupe

As Associate Creative Director, I led UX strategy and product design for Marcel—an AI-powered platform uniting 80,000 employees across 150 agencies worldwide. Collaborating with Microsoft and Publicis Sapient, we designed a conversational interface and web dashboard to streamline collaboration, enhance discovery, and revolutionize daily workflows. Marcel launched regionally in 2019 and has since become a transformative tool, credited with helping Publicis save 2,000 jobs.

Role

Associate Creative Director

Timeline

18 months (2018–19)

Team

Publicis Sapient, Microsoft, Data Scientists, Designers, Engineers

Platform

Mobile App (iOS/Android) + Web Dashboard

Before (Challenge) → After (Solution)

Publicis Groupe needed a unified tool to connect 80K employees, enhance collaboration, and streamline daily tasks. → Designed Marcel: an AI platform combining people search, project discovery, daily news, and task automation tools.

Employees struggled to see value in using a new internal tool alongside existing workflows. → Created an engaging onboarding experience and flexible UI to drive daily adoption across agencies.

No system existed for surfacing agency expertise, award-winning work, or enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration. → Developed “Find People” and “Find Work” tools to connect colleagues and showcase creative excellence globally.

How WE Got There

Led UX design teams in collaboration with Microsoft to architect Marcel’s core features and conversational interface.

Delivered workflows and UIs for:

  • Onboarding flows to educate and engage first-time users.

  • Find People tool for discovering colleagues with specific skills and experience across 80K employees.

  • Find Work interface to explore award-winning campaigns and the teams behind them.

  • Daily Digest hub, presenting news and cultural content in customizable cards to foster engagement.

  • Notifications, nudges, and global navigation systems to drive daily habit formation.

Worked in agile sprints, collaborating with developers, data scientists, and editorial teams to iterate rapidly and remove blockers.

Selected ScreenS

Onboarding Flow: Educates new users about Marcel’s tools and benefits to encourage adoption.

LEGAL_FLOW_12.3.png

Find People UI: Conversational search for colleagues with specific expertise across 150 agencies.

Find Work Explorer: Surfaces award-winning campaigns and details about collaborators, agencies, and assets.

Daily Digest Cards: Flexible editorial designs delivering company news, cultural stories, and inspiration.

This is an example of navigation through the daily custom content published on the platform. I also helped define the behavior of notifications, nudges, and disambiguation in the conversational interface, how Jobs may appear on the platform, user feedback, and global navigation.

Impact Box

Result → Outcome

Unified 80K employees across 150 agencies → Empowered collaboration and knowledge-sharing at a global scale.

Regional rollout in UK (2019) → Successfully launched Marcel to employees with positive adoption and feedback.

Credited with helping Publicis save 2,000 jobs during economic uncertainty → Reinforced Marcel’s role as a transformative, industry-leading internal platform.

“Marcel reimagined how 80,000 employees work across continents, blending AI, design, and data to create a more connected, adaptive organization.”

Key Reflection

“This project showed the power of pairing design thinking with AI and organizational strategy. Next time, I’d push for user testing across multiple regions earlier to refine adoption strategies.”

Design POV

“Enterprise tools succeed when they feel as intuitive and engaging as consumer apps. With Marcel, we focused on conversational interactions and flexible content systems to integrate seamlessly into employees’ daily workflows.”