Publicis.Sapient and Luminoso Technologies, Inc. Team to Accelerate the Development and Application of Artificial Intelligence for Marketing and Business Transformation

Today, Publicis.Sapient, a division of Publicis Groupe [Euronext Paris: FR0000130577, CAC40], and Luminoso Technologies, a leading global player in Artificial Intelligence (AI) based deep analytics, announced a strategic partnership to help clients transform unstructured data into actionable insights that enable them to better capitalize upon opportunities created by today’s digitally disrupted environment. Together, Publicis.Sapient and Luminoso will develop AI-supported applications and services that leverage consumer data to help clients drive growth, increase marketing performance, and build better customer experiences. The organizations announced the partnership and unveiled their first solution – a cutting-edge, hyper-personalized Virtual Assistant for the retail industry – at the AI Summit, the world’s largest conference and exhibition to look at the practical implications of AI for enterprise organizations.

Publicis.Sapient is the world’s largest digitally-centered platform focused exclusively on digital business transformation. The Publicis.Sapient AI practice works with clients to deliver on the transformative power of AI, creating solutions that seamlessly layer data analytics, machine learning and causal reasoning platforms to deliver insights-driven, personalized products and services, engage customers and accelerate business transformation. With more than 22,000 people around the world, Publicis.Sapient combines global leaders in digital – SapientNitro, Razorfish and DigitasLBi – with the deep industry expertise of Sapient Consulting, to help clients advance their ways of working and compete in the digital era.

Luminoso Technologies is a leading AI-based deep analytics company with roots at the MIT Media Lab that enables rapid analysis of large amounts of unstructured text data to understand the meaning behind the words people use, even picking up on slang, and domain-specific or “technical jargon.” Unlike analytics solutions that rely on ontologies and long lists of keywords, Luminoso’s software uniquely produces the most accurate and unbiased real-time understanding of what consumers are thinking and how they are feeling, including insights that were unanticipated.

Together, Publicis.Sapient and Luminoso will develop and market services and solutions that transform the way their clients interact with customers by leveraging Luminoso’s industry-leading ability to analyze unstructured data to determine not just customers’ sentiment but also their underlying motivation, insight and intent. Estimates by industry analysts suggest that the market for business applications and services employing AI could reach $5.05 billion by 20201.

“As our clients contend with the impact of digital disruption, they must harness multiple, often unintelligible, data sources. Working with Luminoso, we can deploy state-of-the-art solutions to make sense of this disparate information and enable our clients to act upon the insights gleaned from it to not only improve their customer relationships, but also transform their businesses to gain competitive advantage,” said Josh Sutton, Global Head, Data and Artificial Intelligence Practice at Publicis.Sapient.

Publicis.Sapient and Luminoso will focus on four initial areas for solution development:

1. Customer Experience: Publicis.Sapient will leverage the power of Luminoso’s technology to help clients quickly derive meaning from multiple sources of written customer feedback data -- from open ended surveys, to chat, social, support tickets, call center logs, and product reviews -- and apply insights to significantly improve customer experience.
2. Marketing Services: Publicis.Sapient will introduce a new set of marketing intelligence services leveraging Luminoso’s technology to help clients revitalize a wide range of critical marketing strategies and activities, including initiating more impactful targeted marketing campaigns, and improving the overall development, packaging, pricing, and promotion of products and offerings.
3. Government: Sapient Government Services, a division of Publicis.Sapient that focuses on the US government, and Luminoso will work together to use innovative AI capabilities to help federal agencies transform data into actionable insights, enabling improved services to citizens.
4. Retail: Publicis.Sapient and Luminoso will work together to design better physical and online retail experiences for the digital age, helping clients to provide a more direct user interface through intelligent agents and more conversational retail experiences.

The Future of Retail: New Conversation Tool to Improve Customer Experience

In looking at the retail industry specifically, Publicis.Sapient and Luminoso created a groundbreaking Virtual Assistant that is capable of “capturing insight” – or understanding and anticipating what a person may want or need based upon verbal and written cues. This tool varies significantly from Virtual Assistants that are on the market today, which generally only “capture intent” – or answer a specific question – e.g., “what time is it in Rio?” or fulfill a specific request – e.g., “play Michael Jackson’s greatest hits.”

“Most virtual assistants available on the market today feature simple decision trees that lead to defined and narrow outcomes. What we have created with Publicis.Sapient is the truest form of conversational commerce: an interactive experience designed to draw insight about a customer and curate a wider range of more personalized options for him or her as a result. What we’ve effectively created are ‘Conversations that Matter,’” said Catherine Havasi, CEO of Luminoso. “We are thrilled to partner with Publicis.Sapient as they continue to leverage AI to pioneer new ways of working with clients.”

1 http://aitrends.com/features/10-stats-about-ai-that-will-blow-you-away/