Publicis Groupe has called on the agency sector to stop making what it calls the “wrong promises” in pitches and claimed it has been leading to “a race to the bottom” and industry job cuts.Big agency groups have been over-promising on AI and making “unsustainable commercial offers” to clients, according to Arthur Sadoun, chief executive of Publicis, who has released a film, “Wrong promises”, that parodies some bad pitch practices, particularly around AI and data.Sadoun said he wanted to highlight the issue ahead of next week’s Cannes Lions — where Publicis will be sending about 40% fewer staff this year — and he urged the industry to focus on delivering “business results” for clients at the festival.He insisted he was not looking to knock rivals, and maintained it was a collective issue for agency groups, including Publicis. Sadoun also pointed out his voice features at one point briefly during the film.The 145-second spot begins as a news report about what it calls “advertising’s silent problem” and asks “how far are prestigious highly capable advertising holding companies willing to go?” to win new business.Various scenes, “based on true events”, follow, with mostly blurred-out faces. These include a client recalling how an agency offered to pay a $5m (£3.7m) bonus if the brand adopted its AI platform, a pitch consultant talking about “things have gone off the rails,” and a second client saying an agency had lined up a shopping date at their favourite Italian designer in Milan.Another client, meanwhile, claimed an agency said the brand didn’t have to pay “until we win you a gold Lion” at Cannes.There are no identifiable people or companies in the film — unlike two years ago when Publicis came under fire for mocking some of its competitors and its own executives in another pre-Cannes film aimed at “taking the BS out of AI”.Sadoun made the new film as a “parody” because he said it was important for a creative industry to show it can use humour to raise a difficult topic.He said: “The compound effect of over-promising on AI and unsustainable commercial offers in pitches to generate headlines is leading to massive jobs cuts in our industry. Collectively, we have to stop this race to the bottom and reaffirm our unique ability to deliver what clients really want: love for their brands, growth they can see, success they can measure. That’s why Publicis’ sessions [for clients] in Cannes will demonstrate that the only pitch promise that counts is business results.”'We need to wake people up'Asked how Publicis has been changing its own behaviour in pitches, Sadoun said the group was being selective about taking part in reviews.Carla Serrano, global chief strategy officer, speaking alongside him, added Publicis has also changed the way it showcases its AI capabilities to clients and uses “a live platform — it’s not a demo, it’s not a video”.Serrano said the film conveyed a “serious message” and the sentiment about unrealistic promises would be widely shared among agency peers. “I do think that we need to wake people up,” she said. “When we're in midst of big pitches, this is what people talk about [behind closed doors]. The people on the ground are like, ‘I hope that when we win this pitch, we can actually have enough people to do this’.”She suggested parts of the ad industry have been caught up in “a hype cycle” about the benefits of AI. “Our industry as a whole is not seen to be necessarily an AI winner, and it's compounded by the way that we've all approached new business, which has increasingly been what I call ‘AI pitch maxing’,” she said. “AI is being used as almost this ability to hyperbolise what is possible.” She went on: “At some point, AI will do incredible things. I just don't think they're doing it right now for clients — at the scale that they're looking for.”Serrano added she has seen a growing trend for “clients actually asking for more people” to work on their accounts, rather than always turning to technology as a solution. Sadoun added Publicis has been investing in talent, increasing headcount by about 40,000 to around 114,000 since 2017, in contrast to job cuts in some other parts of the sector.Pitching to clients at CannesPublicis, the best-performing agency group since the pandemic, will be hosting around 60 client presentations during Cannes week — a focus for the French agency group in recent years as it uses the festival to court clients.A showpiece private event for around 350 clients and 70 investors on its Influential beach next Tuesday (23 June) will feature senior marketers from Mars and The Coca-Cola Company — two major media accounts that Publicis won last year, both from WPP. Gülen Bengi, global chief marketing officer of Mars, and Shakir Moin, president of marketing for North America at Coca-Cola will talk about the results of their work with Publicis in the last year.Sadoun said the French group has cut staff numbers by about 40% at Cannes, with around 300 to 350 employees set to attend. “We only have creatives with work that is in the festival or leaders who have client meetings,” he said, although the final number will depend on last-minute commitments. Publicis has also made “less entries” to the Lions awards.He added “Client attendance is very high” but didn’t know yet how it would compare with a year ago.Publicis will also be using its activity in Cannes to mark the agency group’s 100th birthday and celebrate its French roots. Collective responsibility Pitch consultants responded with interest to Publicis’ comments about the current state of the new business market.Ryan Kangisser, chief strategy officer at Media Sense, said: “Commercially there have been examples of unsustainable offers being made, which is a symptom of perhaps the most competitive time there has been in our industry. I do agree, there needs to be collective responsibility to ensure commercial offers are financially sustainable and fundamentally incentivise the right behaviours.”However, he suggested clients have worked hard to improve the pitch process. “Clients are better equipped today than ever to interrogate agency solutions across AI, data and tech, especially as they push for greater interoperability than dependency,” Kangisser said. “Pitches have swiftly become less ‘show and tell,’ and more ‘show, share and play’ to enable clients to get a meaningful sense of what it’s like to work together. They want to know what really exists beneath the bonnet as well as the underlying commercial model.”Lucinda Peniston-Baines, co-founder of The Observatory International, said: “Because we're intermediaries and agencies work with repeatedly and long-term, they tend to behave pretty well in pitches. We don’t see any dodgy practices but we may see quite stretching claims about what they can deliver from an AI point of view in terms of speed or cost efficiencies, which sometimes raise an eyebrow in terms of what is credibly deliverable.”She said agencies promising more in pitches "has definitely accelerated" in the last 12 to 18 months. "Agencies and groups have been projecting efficiencies — whether it is time or costs — but they don’t always make the case to a client that it will require investment. Clients can come away [from a meeting] thinking about a big, fat number from a saving or reinvestment, without thinking about costs such as tool usage."This story first appeared on Campaign UK.