Adweek reported Omnicom—upon closing its acquisition of IPG—announced the new structure
along with the new leadership team.
As previously leaked, iconic White advertising
agencies—including FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe—are being dumped.
Ditto 4,000
drones worldwide.
Given the honcho
squad was immediately unveiled, it’s a safe bet the soon-to-be-unemployed have
already been identified. Omnicom Chairman, CEO, and Pioneer of Diversity John Wren admitted as much when stating
layoffs are rolling out currently.
Wren’s
Naughty and Nice List undoubtedly rivals Santa’s annual performance review.
Omnicom to
Cut 4,000 Jobs, Retire FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe
BBDO, TBWA,
and McCann emerge as the three global creative networks in post-IPG overhaul
By Audrey Kemp
and Alison Weissbrot
Omnicom has
announced its new structure and leadership team on the heels of completing its
$13.5 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group on Wednesday.
The new holding
company, led by John Wren as CEO, is organized into seven core divisions.
Creative arm
Omnicom Advertising, which will continue to be led by current CEO and president
Troy Ruhanen, includes TBWA, BBDO, and McCann as its three global networks. FCB
will roll under BBDO, while DDB and MullenLowe become part of the TBWA network.
All three brands will cease to exist.
Omnicom Media,
run by Florian Adamski, includes legacy Omnicom agencies OMD, PHD, Hearts &
Science, as well as former IPG agencies Mediahub, Initiative, and UM. It is the
largest media organization globally by billings.
Duncan Painter
will lead the Flywheel Commerce Network and OmniPlus, an upgraded version of
the Omni platform, as CEO, while Sergio Lopez remains leading Omnicom
Production, which will merge with IPG’s Craft. Luke Taylor will continue to run
Omnicom Precision Marketing and Chris Foster will oversee Omnicom Public
Relations.
Each division
is led by a former Omnicom vet, save for Omnicom Health, which will be led by
Dana Maiman (IPG Health) as CEO. She reports to Michael Larson, CEO of Omnicom
Diversified Agency Services, who was previously interim CEO of Omnicom Health.
Additionally,
all clients will have a dedicated lead, or “client success leader,” that
ensures each is getting access to the right set of tools, talent, and
capabilities across the network. These execs roll up into Jacki Kelly, chief
client and business officer (formerly of IPG) and Andrea Lennon, chief client
experience officer (formerly of Omnicom).
George Manas,
former CEO of OMD Worldwide, will become chief growth and solutions officer,
focused on orchestrating bespoke tech and data solutions for enterprise
clients.
Omnicom execs
Daryl Simm and Phil Angelastro will stay on as COO and CFO, respectively.
Former IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky will remain as co-president and COO.
All entities
with the name “IPG,” such as IPG Health and IPG Mediabrands, have been
eliminated.
4,000 jobs
on the line
As part of the
restructuring, Wren estimates that around 4,000 positions will be eliminated
globally. “That’s going to allow us to meet and exceed the synergies that we
promised the marketplace last December,” he told ADWEEK.
The job cuts
are in addition to the 3,200 roles IPG shed this year ahead of the acquisition,
and the 3,000 staffers Omnicom let go after announcing the deal last fall.
The anticipated
layoffs, which Wren said are rolling out currently, will bring the total number
of eliminated positions to around 10,000, or roughly 8% of the combined
organization’s 2024 headcount.
Cuts are
focused on removing duplicate positions and trimming unnecessary management
layers, Wren said. While he acknowledged that the layoffs impact “a lot of
people’s lives, and we’re terribly sensitive to it,” he described the overall
number as “a very low single-digit type of efficiency.”
Wren said
affected employees will be notified as quickly as possible heading into
December so as “not to leave people in a state of doubt.” Ruhanen said
reductions began Oct. 1.
Adamski pushed
back on framing the cuts as the defining story of the acquisition. “This is not
about eradicating jobs. This is about building a company for the future,” he
said.
Creative
darlings
Omnicom chose
BBDO, TBWA, and McCann as its global creative networks moving forward because
of their clear positioning, established client relationships, and broad
international footprints, Wren said.
“We’ve made the
choice of which culture we want it to be, which brand we want it to be, and
which methodology we’re putting our effort behind,” added Ruhanen.
Omnicom is also
keeping many of its boutique and specialist agencies under the Omnicom
Advertising Collective as well as IPG’s boutique creative agencies intact,
including The Martin Agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Lucky Generals,
Zimmerman, Mercury, GMR, Carmichael Lynch, GSD&M, Grabarz & Partners,
Antoni, Lola, Africa, Serino Coyne, Bright Red Agency, and Merkley &
Partners.
Specialist
agencies such as Alma (which was part of the DDB network), Dieste, TMA, Agency
720, and Platinum Rye Entertainment will also remain intact.
Omnicom
experiential agencies will continue to report to Ruhanen, while legacy IPG
experiential shops will report to Krakowsky “for the time being,” Ruhanen said.
He added that
employees will receive communications about reporting lines and transitions
this week—“basically as quickly as possible” to move forward with the
transition.
Media and
Tech
A major focus
of the announcement was OmniPlus, the next iteration of the Omni platform
underpinned by Acxiom’s Real ID and Flywheel’s commerce infrastructure. Painter
said OmniPlus will formally launch at CES 2026 and begin rolling out to the
company’s top 10 major clients in Q1.
“It will be a
fully end-to-end, integrated operating system for Omnicom, going from creative
thought all the way through to media execution and reporting through to sales…
all linked back to single consumer records by brand,” he told ADWEEK.
Paolo Yuvienco,
Omnicom’s chief technology officer, added that the combined data set is “by
far, bar none, the most elite data set in the world” on the buy side of
advertising, and is already integrated with Omnicom’s agentic AI tools.
Media scale is
also an anticipated advantage of the combination. Bringing the two
organizations together, at a combined $73.4 billion in billings, will create a
media powerhouse that “can get the best commercial deals for our clients and
for ourselves,” Wren said.
Adamski
emphasized, however, that principal media remains a “small portion” of
Omnicom’s overall billings, but is an important “modern vehicle” for creating
commercial value. “People that continue to simply claim that we’re growing
because of principal media—it’s just not true. But my job is to bring the best
possible value to our clients,” he said.
What’s certain
is that Omnicom is building for a world where AI plays a central role in
marketing. As Adamski put it: “In five years from now, we will be advertising
and communicating with AI more than to human audiences.”
Editor’s
Note 12/1 at 9:35am ET:
This story has been updated to remove incorrect information provided by Omnicom
about how the Omnicom Advertising Collective will be structured moving forward,
including which agencies remain intact.
