17306: On Spiking DDB.

 

Just wondering. How much longer before Spike DDB drops DDB?

17305: Omnicom Formula—TPN + Flywheel = Flywheel.

 

Adweek reported Omnicom continues to reengineer firms and erase nameplates following the acquisition of IPG.

 

The latest scheme involves folding shopper marketing agency TPN under the masthead of retail media data agency Flywheel.

 

According to Adweek, the blending doesn’t ignite immediate redundancies or instant RIFs.

 

Then again, given the retail space is struggling to survive, how long can a rejiggered Flywheel, well, fly?

 

EXCLUSIVE: Omnicom Folds Shopper Marketing Agency TPN Into Flywheel 

 

The move streamlines the holdco’s commerce media offering.

 

By Kathryn Lundstrom

 

Following its acquisition of IPG, Omnicom is streamlining its commerce media offering as it aims to compete with Publicis.

 

In the first of a series of changes for Omnicom’s commerce media business, the holding company is moving 40-year-old shopper marketing agency TPN under the Flywheel banner.

 

TPN was founded as The Promotion Network in the early 1980s in Dallas. Omnicom bought the agency in 2001. Now, it’ll be absorbed by Flywheel and the TPN brand will be sunset.

 

Mike Feldman, svp of commerce for Flywheel, described the move as an effort toward “operational integration” rather than traditional consolidation. It’s part of a wider effort to build a “connected commerce solution” within Omnicom, he said, combining Flywheel’s 15 years of retail media data with TPN’s four decades of shopper marketing work.

 

“By unifying shopper, brand, and retail media under one coordinated ecosystem, we will shape and elevate the new standard for how brands plan, activate, and measure across the entire commerce journey,” Alex McCord, CEO of Flywheel, said in a statement.

As part of the integration, former TPN president Sarah Cunningham has been appointed to chief retail experience officer at Flywheel, reporting directly to McCord.

 

Phil Camarota, former chief creative officer at Omnicom-owned agency TracyLocke, is now chief creative officer at Flywheel. Chris Rueckert, previously svp of commerce at TPN, moved to Flywheel in June and holds the same title. At the time of writing, there have been no confirmed layoffs as a result of the integration.

 

“Transitioning TPN into Flywheel underscores Omnicom’s commitment to leading the next wave of connected commerce,” Duncan Painter, CEO of Flywheel Commerce Network and Omni, said in a statement. Painter was previously CEO of Flywheel, and was tapped to lead Omnicom’s wider commerce practice following the IPG acquisition.

 

“The move marks a major milestone in Flywheel’s growth journey, combining TPN’s 40+ years or retail and creative expertise with Flywheel’s global scale in technology, data, and media to meet the rapidly changing needs of modern brands and shoppers,” Painter continued.

 

The change follows months of planning, Feldman said. Flywheel is also transitioning to a pod structure following the addition of TPN, meaning that teams will be organized around clients rather than around products.

 

That’s required cross training all of Flywheel’s teams so that staff can serve as strategic consultants across retail media, shopper marketing, ecommerce, product detail pages, and more, Feldman explained. That will allow those teams to better adapt the agency’s capabilities to the needs of the client rather than simply pulling levers — something that’ll only become more necessary as AI automates swaths of the media buying process.

 

While a client-oriented structure is more common in traditional ad agencies, it’s been less common for retail media agencies because of retail media’s inherent complexity, he said.

 

Looking ahead, Feldman noted there’ll be more to come as Omnicom’s connected commerce solution takes shape. The IPG acquisition means that Omnicom now has access to Acxiom’s data and identity solutions, as well as Kinesso’s talent. Those additions could help the agency better compete with Publicis, which made a series of retail media related acquisitions between

 

“I’m very bullish on [Acxiom],” Feldman said.

17304: Unilever CMGO Going Away.

 

Adweek reported on CMO moves at Unilever, whereby the mega-marketer appears to have simultaneously reduced DEIBA+ and increased the employment challenges faced by US Black women.

 

Unilever Won’t Replace the CMGO Title as Esi Eggleston Bracey Exits 

 

Instead, beauty and wellbeing CMO Leandro Barreto will add enterprise duties to his remit

 

By Rebecca Stewart

 

Esi Eggleston Bracey, Unilever’s chief marketing and growth officer (CMGO), is set to leave in January 2026 after just over two years in the role and eight years with the business.

 

The CMGO position will not be replaced like-for-like, Unilever confirmed to ADWEEK. Instead, Leandro Barreto, chief marketing officer, Unilever Beauty and Wellbeing, will extend his remit to include Unilever’s enterprise marketing agenda.

 

The move reflects what Unilever describes as the next phase of its marketing transformation, which will bring global marketing capabilities closer to its business groups, resulting in faster execution and impact.

 

Bracey will stay on through January to support Barreto in the transition.

 

A new marketing era

 

In 2023, Unilever (which owns over 400 brands) restructured its business around five key groups: personal care; beauty and well-being; nutrition; home care; and ice cream, which was spun off in December 2025 as the Magnum Ice Cream company.

 

As the restructuring took hold, Eggleston Bracey was appointed as CMGO to lead the team of marketers overseeing these divisions.

 

She also took responsibility for Unilever’s network of digital marketing, media, and commerce hubs, which pool talent from across the business to deliver “seamless consumer experiences” across platforms.

 

Bracey joined Unilever in 2018 as evp and chief operating officer overseeing its personal care division in North America.

 

During that time, she pioneered the company’s then purpose-driven marketing approach. She also spearheaded Dove’s efforts to back the Crown Act, a proposed federal ban on workplace discrimination based on hairstyle or texture.

 

In her two years as CMGO, Bracey has been credited with leading Unilever into its digital marketing era, placing an emphasis on driving brand relevance at scale across brands, including Dove, Hellmann’s, and Persil. She’s also pioneered AI experiments to drive marketing and content efficiencies.

 

Barreto, a 23-year Unilever vet, will now be tasked with bridging Unilever’s long-term growth ambitions with business group-level execution.

 

A ‘sales and marketing’ machine

 

Since taking the reins in March 2025, CEO Fernando Fernandez has been increasing Unilever’s marketing budget to build a “marketing and sales machine” in an environment ripe with challengers and where consumers are cutting discretionary spend.

 

So far, his strategy has included a pledge to invest 30 to 50% of its $8 billion annual ad spend to “social-first” campaigns, and work with 20-times more influencers in the process.

 

Beauty and wellbeing, for which Barreto oversees marketing, have been central to pushing up Unilever’s profits, which increased 3.9% year-on-year to reach $17.2 million in October.

17303: On Trump Tariffs, Trouble, & Turmoil.

 

Digiday published content confirming President Donald J. Trump deserved being named White Man Of The Year 2025. The man continues to make an extraordinary impact on Adland.

 

How brands shifted marketing and media strategies through year of tariffs

 

By Sam Bradley

 

The tariff policies imposed by U.S. President Trump at the beginning of his second term in office turned 2025 on its head for marketers.

 

Joshua Scherz was among them. Scherz is the founder of Bela, a family-owned seafood brand based in Maine that imports canned sardines from Portugal. Hoping to take advantage of rising demand for premium canned seafood among U.S. consumers, Bela rebranded and launched a direct-to-consumer (DTC) business at the end of January — right into the teeth of President Trump’s trade war.

 

What should have been a celebratory year for the 28-year-old business proved to be one of its hardest. “We took a margin hit,” said Scherz. And Bela wasn’t the only one. 

For Sam Piliero, CEO and founder of media agency The Moonlighters, it’s been a “whirlwind” of a year. The agency works with almost 100 brands, 80% of which are e-commerce businesses – many spending between $1 million-$10 million annually. During the choppiest period of Trump’s tariff maneuvers, Piliero estimated some clients cut back on media spending by 50% as they navigated higher costs on imported goods and the end of the de minimis shipping exemption.

 

“Some of the smaller businesses that weren’t prepared for this had to cut a lot of operational costs,” he said.

 

‘High degree of uncertainty’

 

Though the political drama around tariffs quieted down in the second half of the year, their economic impact will be felt for months to come. The IMF, for example, predicted nominal GDP growth will fall from 9.1% in 2024 to 6.8% in 2026. Though many businesses absorbed the additional cost, many more chose to increase consumer prices, leading to loss of real income for the average American household of $1,257, according to Yale University’s Budget Lab.

 

And although the ad market remained stronger than most expected — WPP recently upgraded its 2025 ad revenue growth projections from 7.7% in 2024, to 8.8% — businesses large and small were forced to devote time and money to navigate the shifting regulatory maze. 

 

“There were shipments that we lost money on because we didn’t want to upset our retailers,” recalled Bogg Bag founder and CEO Kim Vaccarella. The company’s brightly colored bags, which are popular on social media platforms including TikTok, were all manufactured in China at the beginning of the year, putting the company on the hook for tariffs initially as high as 145%.

 

Though that figure has reduced, the firm no longer depends solely on Chinese suppliers. “By the end of December, we’ll have 50% [of our suppliers] in Vietnam,” said Vaccarella. “Unfortunately … there still isn’t a lot of certainty. But you still have to run the business.”

 

Target, already weathering one of the rockiest years in its history, has had to manage similar disruption on a much larger scale. In May, a 5.7% fall in sales was attributed to the introduction of tariffs. “The difficulty level has been incredibly high, given the magnitude of the rates we’re facing and a high degree of uncertainty,” CEO Brian Cornell told analysts that month.

 

‘We scaled back significantly’

 

In some cases, brands had to choose between media budgets or their price margins. Vaccarella said that Bogg Bag reduced its ad spending by 10%, as part of a wider cost-cutting push that enabled it to hold prices. “We scaled back on that [advertising] significantly in that period,” she said.

 

Within his agency’s roster, Piliero saw several clients move production out of China to countries with smaller tariffs, such as Brazil and Mexico, while two apparel clients stopped advertising altogether. More typically, those clients that had reduced their spending in the first half of the year ended up increasing investment just months later. Piliero told Digiday revenues and client accounts had both doubled in 2025. He didn’t provide financial specifics.

 

Not every brand choosing to absorb rising costs altered its advertising plans. Some cut back on free online returns, while others rethought their promotional calendar — and some international brands stepped back from the U.S. altogether (and some U.S. brands leant farther into overseas markets).

 

At Bela, which faced a 15% blanket tariff on goods from the European Union, Scherz decided not to raise prices and not to cut paid media investment. The brand originally planned on spending 15% of its sales on advertising, the bulk on Instagram and Facebook (Scherz didn’t provide a dollar amount). 

 

But as well as additional costs, delays moving goods through ports during the spring led to stock shortages. “After 28 years, I pride myself on being in stock — even throughout the entire pandemic. This was a much more challenging year than the pandemic,” he said.

 

The shortages led Bela to focus promotional efforts on the products it had over the ones it couldn’t ship (in this case, piri-piri sardines over lemon sardines). As a result, Scherz’s team tilted the campaign supporting Bela’s DTC business farther into brand storytelling, and away from emphasizing specific products. 

 

In Target’s case, the retailer chose to refocus its campaign messaging on own-brand product lines and its decision not to raise prices. “We continue to see strong consumer response to campaigns that clearly communicate savings, newly lowered prices and stylish, on-trend items at affordable price,” chief guest experience officer Cara Sylvester said in an email.

 

Noble West, a full-service agency that works with food and beverage firms Sun Valley Rice and nut company Minturn, found clients willing to take a similar direction. Founder and CEO Ali Cox told Digiday the tariffs had granted some of its clients a window to reinforce regional credentials. 

 

“In times of international uncertainty it’s actually an opportunity to double-down on the safety and ‘local’ story,” she said. The agency’s clients had refocused on content marketing and social campaign activity; she declined to provide specific examples.

 

‘A good problem to have’

 

Marketers deciding whether to change course – and if so, how – have had to juggle opportunity cost alongside rising real costs. In many cases, the impact of tariffs wasn’t felt by businesses until months after they were imposed – just as they went into the make-or-break Q4 sales period. Some marketers cut back on creator spending in response.

 

According to John Shea, head of commerce at PMG, while some clients reduced their spending in that period, high e-commerce demand among shoppers meant most kept their investments in place. As a result, PMG’s revenue during the fourth quarter was “slightly better than expectation”, he noted, without providing specifics.

 

Elsewhere, Piliero said clients were less willing to take a chance on channels with unproven performance, preferring to keep budget focused on Facebook or Google’s search inventory.

 

While 2026 should bring fewer surprises, businesses that chose to absorb higher costs will have to choose whether or not they continue to do so — and if so, whether to cut marketing spend to maintain profit margins. At full-service agency Moroch, CEO Matt Powell said he expects one or two “very conservative” clients to cut media spend by 5-10%, while others are set to take a wait-and-see approach.

 

Shea hopes 2026 will bring relative calm after the “super turbulent” 2025, while major sporting events like the World Cup and Winter Olympics offer the chance of boosting brand spending. “I think you’re going to expect an extra 2% bump in overall media spending just [from those] cultural moments,” he suggested.

 

Despite the turbulence, Bela’s DTC business caught an updraft. Speaking to Digiday a week after visiting Portugal to visit olive oil suppliers, Scherz said the company recorded “exponential growth” in sales. In 2026, he said the brand will promote its full range of items and forge ahead on its DTC business.

 

“We were confronted with logistical challenges and inventory challenges, but the demand for canned fish is insane” he said. “That’s a good problem to have.”

17302: One Big Beautiful Recruitment Campaign For ICE…?

MediaPost reported ICE will run a $100 million recruitment campaign in the next year.

 

Looks like President Donald J. Trump is out to repeat as White Man Of The Year 2026.

 

ICE Plans $100M Recruitment Campaign

 

By Tanya Gazdik

 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are planning to spend $100 million over the next year on recruitment. 

 

“A strategy document shared among immigration officials details plans to use influencers and geo-targeted ads to supercharge their push to hire thousands of deportation officers nationwide,” according to an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post. “The spending would help President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda dominate media networks and recruitment channels, including through ads targeting people who have attended UFC fights, listened to patriotic podcasts or shown an interest in guns and tactical gear, according to a 30-page document distributed among officials in this summer detailing ICE’s ‘surge hiring marketing strategy.’”

 

The 30-page strategy “calls for ICE to ‘flood the market’ with recruitment messaging across platforms ranging from Snapchat to conservative-friendly video services like Rumble, while also leaning on an ad-industry tactic known as ‘geofencing’—pushing ads to phones that pass through designated locations,” notes The Daily Beast. “The targeted zones include military bases, NASCAR races, college campuses, and gun and trade shows, the outlet says.”

 

The aggressive recruitment campaign is at a scale never seen before. It is being promoted on social media with calls for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.” ICE is working with People Who Think, a Louisiana-based creative agency, which received the contract in August.

 

“The agency is reportedly signing on nearly 10,000 new agents in an effort to meet the demands of President Trump's immigration agenda,” according to PBS. “But some critics are concerned about the recruitment tactics and changes ICE has made to hiring and training standards.”

 

The new hires would more than double the number of deportation officers, from roughly 6,000 to 16,000.

 

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July included almost $75 billion extra for ICE, making it the highest funded law enforcement agency in the U.S. government, outstripping the FBI, notes PBS. 

 

“DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin called the recruitment campaign ‘wildly successful’ and ‘under budget and ahead of schedule,’” according to The Latin Times. “She went on to say that ICE has received more than 220,000 job applications in five months and made over 18,000 tentative job offers. More than 85% of new hires had experience in law enforcement, McLaughlin added.”

 

The agency has removed age limits for applicants and has offered signing bonuses of up to $50,000.

17301: White Man Of The Year 2025.

Instead of the regular “Year In Review” post, MultiCultClassics introduces White Man Of The Year 2025.

 

The new honor spotlights the White Man who made the greatest negative impact on Adland in the last 12 months—as well as contributed to DEIBA+ devolution.

 

The inaugural award goes to two White men whose actions have dramatically affected the global industry, albeit in extraordinarily different ways.

 

Omnicom Chairman, CEO, and Pioneer of Diversity John Wren

 

Wren orchestrated the Omnicom acquisition of IPG, which technically began and was announced in 2024 (maybe earlier).

 

The scheme ignited global pruning, radical RIFs, and iconic nameplate erasures. And the corporate demolition/deconstruction/desecration is expected to extend into 2026 and beyond.

 

Blending an organization led by the Pioneer of Diversity with a gobbledygook-vomiting enterprise recognized for leadership in diversity and inclusion marked the pinnacle of performative PR. Then again, the lack of transparency involving anti-DEIBA+ maneuvers prohibited assessing how much collateral damage of color occurred. It’s a safe bet, however, that the acquisition accelerated the employment challenges faced by US Black women.

 

In short, thousands of livelihoods—along with countless uncounted Dawn Chambers—were eliminated.

 

President Donald J. Trump

 

Tylenol, Tariffs, Bashing Big Pharma, and Anti-Woke + Anti-DEIBA+ are just the tip of the Trump iceberg that might sink Adland. ‘Nuff said.

17300: Trump Trumps DEIBA+.

Can’t help but think Trump Store represents the polar opposite of WeLoveUs.shop

 

President Donald J. Trump argued citizens should significantly reduce the number of purchased pencils and dolls. Yet does anyone need even a single item on this website?