Publicis Groupe Launches New Creative Centre Le Truc in New York

Publicis Groupe today announced the launch of Le Truc, a New York City-based centre of creative excellence for clients, converging 600+ creatives, producers, and creative strategists from Publicis Groupe New York agencies into one dynamic, collaborative space. Le Truc, which translates from French as 'the thingamajig, the knack, the way' fuels the organisation’s creativity offering.

“The post-pandemic world and workplace will never be the same, and we must design for the future – which will be flexible, collaborative and ever-changing.” said Carla Serrano, global chief strategy officer of Publicis Groupe and president of Le Truc. “Le Truc’s nimble, fluid talent model brings together the best minds and offerings, ensuring clients get curated teams while delivering more enriching and diverse experiences for our people.”

The founding partners that form the chief creative leadership of Le Truc include new hires Neil Heymann and Bastien Baumann, with Liz Taylor and Andy Bird. Le Truc will be led by Carla Serrano as president, with Elaine Barker who will lead resource management and operations. The new entity brings together the NYC-based creative and production force of Publicis, Digitas, Razorfish, Rokkan, Saatchi & Saatchi and Publicis Media.

Neil, most recently global chief creative officer for Accenture’s Droga5, brings to Le Truc more than 20 years of experience across design, interactive and advertising, working with some of the most high-profile agencies and clients in the world. Highlights include Decode Jay-Z with Bing, Did You Mean Mailchimp?, Prudential Challenge Lab, the Toyota Mirai launch and Huggies’ latest brand refresh. Neil helped lead Droga5 to over 25 Agency of the Year wins, four recognitions by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, and two Agency of the Decade titles. Most recently, he was responsible for leading Droga5 into new markets in its partnership with Accenture.

Bastien, previously executive creative director and head of design at Ogilvy, has built multiple design teams from the ground up and has earned various industry awards including D&AD yellow pencils and a number of Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.

“The last year has shown us that, no matter what, creativity finds a way,” said Neil. “But we’ve also realised that there are times when it’s more fun to solve problems and make things outside the confines of our little video boxes. As we emerge from this time apart, we’re excited to build Le Truc as a central space where so many talented people can come together and create.”

The space will be nestled at the heart of Publicis Groupe’s flagship building at 375 Hudson, in order to service all parts of the operation. It is being designed by A+I, renowned for developing the creatively progressive headquarters of Squarespace and Equinox. The goal is a space that can further fuel the creativity of our core and unique agency brands, fluidly in an onsite/online hybrid world, while boosting the collaborative and spontaneous energy creatives have missed through the pandemic.

Finally, Le Truc will foster an open community to further incubate diversity of talent, thought and approach. In this spirit, Le Truc announces a joint venture to launch a new, black-owned experimental studio focused on connecting historical context and nuanced culture perspective to creative experience and technology solutions. The founders of the studio are Quinnton Harris, Chijioke Amah, Joy Ekuta and Ajene Green, and anticipate bringing their new offering to market in the coming weeks.

Quinnton commented: “Brands that can be retrospective about their past while embracing the changes of the times can truly deliver rich, authentic and inclusive human experiences - in fact, they will ultimately be the ones that endure as we evolve to be a more inclusive and equitable society. Our studio will complement Le Truc with its focus on delivering these experiences for both social and business impact.”

Le Truc is a next-generation creative model consistent with Publicis Groupe’s Power of One and Marcel platform. It will operate as a prototype hub, initially in New York, with a test and learn spirit.