Media: All about ... The launch of VivaKi.

Can Publicis Groupe's new digital agency deliver, Alasdair Reid asks.

Thanks to its brave but ultimately precious belief that the world outside France must surely harbour French tendencies of some sort, however mild or suppressed, Publicis Groupe is often responsible for classic 'lost in translation' moments.

Some are mildly eccentric (that extra 'e' in Groupe, for starters), some are surreal, some border on the tragic and some are just mildly amusing Last week's communique from Paris (Publicis Groupe Launches VivaKi: A New Growth Engine for the New Media and Digital Environment) had pretty much acquired the lot by the time it had been rendered into mid- Atlantic English.

Take, for instance, that VivaKi name. It is, the release informs us, what you get when you rear-end 'viva', which means life, into 'ki', which is an alternate form of 'Qi', which, in turn, 'is often translated as energy flow'.

That's not the only flow in play here as it happens. One of the things that will make VivaKi different, we are assured, is another form of fluidity: 'With the shaking up of our industry, new, more flexible and more diversified talents - liquid talents - will be critical.'

Liquid talents. Ah. Of course. How else would you power a growth engine? Senior managers at Publicis operating divisions have learned to grin and bear this sort of stuff - and get on with the job in hand. What's more, they insist, this latest initiative is a lot more interesting - and substantial - than you might believe from a glance over the oddly rendered New Age corporate-speak of the press release.

Or actually, releases. There were two. The second announced the forging of agreements between VivaKi (or, to be more precise, 'the VivaKi Nerve Centre') and the likes of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and AOL to create a common ad trading and audience targeting system.