• by Larissa Faw , December 7, 2020

Publicis Groupe is breaking its annual tradition with its holiday greetings to instead announce Viva La Difference 2021, an event featuring former First Lady Michelle Obama, Disney’s Bob Iger, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella.

The four-day event — for two hours a day — will be led through the network’s connected studios on the Marcel platform bringing together the Groupe’s 80,000 employees. 

Live Q&As will be broadcast during the sessions to give every Publicis employee the opportunity to participate in the event.

In addition to the celebrity speakers, Publicis leaders will share their roadmap for the upcoming year as well as launch its five key initiatives for what they say will reinvent the future of work. 

The seminar was first announced by Chairman Maurice Levy and CEO Arthur Sadoun in their “More than Wishes” video that shows their lives under quarantine. They are messy and lazy, although both still rely on their “I am the Boss” coffee mugs that are familiar from previous holiday videos. 

In this new normal, both have rejected their corporate attire in favor of slippers and t-shirts. Sadoun consumes a lot of snack chips and they have a cat that looks like Garfield.

“After such a challenging year we owe our people more than wishes for 2021,” says Sadoun. “At a time when most of us are still isolated, we believe it is our duty to unite everyone and demonstrate once again that when we wish together, we will together.”