This morning, Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy joined Marc Benioff onstage at the Salesforce1 Tour in Paris. As Marc interviewed Maurice, they discussed Maurice's leadership in the advertising/marketing industry over the last few decades and touched on many key topics affecting advertisers and marketers in the digital age.

When Marc asked Maurice about the transformation he sees the industry taking in the future, Maurice replied:

Mobility is becoming the key element in everything we are doing. Mobile advertising is growing by 25-45-50%. The second element is personalization. What Salesforce has done and others are trying to do with big data is extract the small information, which will change the behavior of the customer. We have apps helping us, but this is only the beginning of what can happen tomorrow. But more importantly in the way people will work, the transformation of our industries, the transformation of innovation will dramatically change the way people work within a company. The way that we interact, the organization, the hierarchy-all of this is something that will be transformed, and tomorrow when we see a different kind of company, we will not recognize what has been built by our successors.

Maurice also discussed his strategy for embracing change throughout his career in the advertising industry saying:

The beauty of advertising is that every 5-7 years, you have a transformation. You have to adapt your side to the new world. When you look at the way Publicis has been transformed from the 50's and 60's, the fantastic job which has been done by the founder, and how we have been transforming ourselves into the 80's, 90's, and today. In the movie, Hotel du Nord, there is a scene where the characters don't recognize one another. If only they could see just a bit ahead, it would all become clear to them. The same is true for all of us. It's difficult to see what's just ahead of us; try to see a little bit ahead of the curve, see what will happen tomorrow. If you try to see too far ahead, you will loose your customers. If you are just a little bit ahead, that is something that people like and it will help you transform the company.

He left the attendees and all of us with this advice: "I think that innovation is a state of mind. You must be open to changing every single day, not hesitating to question yourself and to reinvent everything."

He continued saying:

One of the problems I have to fix in my company is to take more risks. In growing and following the rules and becoming more compliant, we encounter hurdles, we take less risks. We give the lawyers and these compliant people the power which gives a deceleration on the risks that you can take. You must be open to changing every single day, not hesitating to question yourself and to reinvent everything. Also don't hesitate to stop. I stopped a merger, which was the dream of my life, because we were derailing and not going where we wanted to go. You can take huge risks and sometimes you can also accept to lose face, which I did because I thought we were going in the wrong direction. You have to give your employees the right to fail or you will create a risk-adverse culture. We have a risk culture, which is sometimes costing us some mistakes, but most of the time we have a record of success.