"A Lion Never Gives Up"

16 December 2025

5 mins 41s

The lion should be put to sleep tonight.

Agencies have never been great at advertising themselves, but this astonishingly hubristic film by Publicis for Publicis sets a new standard for self-aggrandisement that will be hard to surpass. One hopes that if a brand came to an agency wanting to communicate that it is this pleased with itself, the agency would suggest they rein it in so they don't make fools of themselves. Where was this constraining voice on this project?

In a film designed to celebrate next year's centenary, Publicis boasts of defeating the Nazis, expressed through a scene which depicts Edith Piaf defiantly telling senior officers of the occupying Reich that they will soon be defeated. At her side is a badly-rendered AI lion, representing Publicis. The lion is the least implausible part of this piece of this ahistorical nonsense. Piaf did indeed perform for the Nazis during the war - at nightclubs and brothels reserved for senior officers - and she had a very cosy relationship with the occupying forces right up until the liberation of Paris by the Allied forces, when she did an about turn. Others testified on her behalf and managed to get her off the hook but, her war-time record, was, at best, complicated.

By centring on Piaf's questionable legacy rather than on the genuinely heroic war-time actions of Publicis's Jewish founder Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, which are shunted into the background, the company misses the opportunity to tell a true story of resistance.

What follows is a weird potted history of the company. It brags of its acquisition of other well known agency brands, making use of the AI lion motif in a fashion that makes it look as though they bullied their way to becoming the world's largest advertising holding company - a title that, in any case, carries more stigma than status. So much so, that they should be grateful that the merger that's created Omnicomnomnom means that's no longer the case... instead, this film refuses to acknowledge that they have been displaced.

Then we get to the pandemic which Publicis also seems to think was a triumph for them as they - and they alone, by implication - turned to Zoom to keep everything running and then defeated cancer the same way they defeated the Nazis!

This is such an embarrassing piece of communication that their clients should run for the hills and seek agencies with a less bombastic idea of themselves. They are the resistance now!

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