• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 5, 2024

DUMBO-based digital experience design agency Huge has gone through a lot of iterations -- and manifestations -- since Interpublic acquired it, but it's latest one is reminiscent of something Omnicom invested in long ago: a culture practice.

This morning, the Interpublic shop unveiled a new practice area dubbed "Culture Decoder," shows mission is to analyze billions of cultural data points utilizing AI to come up with recommendations that brands can apply in their advertising, marketing and media strategies.

Check out its sizzle reel above, but here's an excerpt:

"Rather than chasing culture, it allows you to create work that defines it."

If that sounds a lot like what Omnicom's Sparks & Honey has been doing for well over a decade, it might be because Huge's AI recommended Interpublic move more in that direction, given the success it's had for Omnicom.

Sparks & Honey's AI-powered Q platform -- and especially a couple of new generative AI applications developed this past year -- were big factors in MediaPost naming Omnicom our holding company of the year, and the culture shop's daily culture briefings have long been a midday must stop for the editors and many readers of MediaPost.

But the most surprising thing about Huge's diversification into culture consulting is why it took them so long?

To be fair, Huge has been working on other things over the years, including its creation of one of the first-ever AI bot assistants -- Dakota, which was launched in 2016, making it our agency of the year back then -- and its gone through a lot of management changes and repositions since.

So kudos for Huge for getting on the Big Data, AI-powered cultural decoding bandwagon. And who knows, if its insights are as good as Sparks & Honey's and if they make them as publicly accessible, maybe Huge will be an agency of the year again in the future.