The Drum published a lengthy perspective inspired by Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun stating the top three White holding companies—Publicis, Omnicom, and WPP—win 91% of ginormous media pitches.
The figure also translates to global media accounts regularly shifting between Publicis, Omnicom, and WPP. So, every big victory for one company results in a major loss for the incumbent. This further means people working at White holding companies can expect to routinely experience devastating RIFs based on clients’ whims.
Coupled with the sweeping layoffs already planned by restructuring corporations, it portends a dim and dismal forecast for the Adland job market.
The op-ed author whines how the happenings signal the death of innovation. For agency drones, it all marks the rise of insecurity.
Has Publicis boss Arthur Sadoun written the advertising industry’s epitaph?
By Mark Palmer
Arthur Sadoun says three holding companies now win 91% of the biggest media pitches. It sounds like a victory lap. But Mark Palmer hears a funeral march – for originality, challenger thinking and the very reason brands hire agencies in the first place.
Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun recently offered a statistic that could be carved into the advertising and media industry’s gravestone. Citing COMvergence data, he announced that the ‘big three’ – Publicis, Omnicom and WPP – now win “91% of the biggest media pitches.”
It feels like victory. Fewer competitors, high share of major reviews, future cost efficiencies. It’s Coke-versus-Pepsi logic: as long as a few giants fight, they all win.
This is not a win. If you still believe great advertising, media thinking, and talented people can make a difference for brands, this isn’t a triumphant statistic. The industry many once loved has arrived at a bizarre juncture. Some believe it is right on target, while others feel it has missed the point entirely.
Consolidation of pitches suggests agencies are rarely hired for their distinct personalities, rogue brilliance, or ability to inject strategic and creative friction.
The ‘model’ pivot
Sadoun argues that merging IPG into Omnicom has “clarified” and “simplified” the market. He frames it as a natural evolution, comparing it with sectors like telecoms. It’s a telling analogy. If Coke uses telco provider A and Pepsi uses provider B, nobody at Coke remotely cares. Telco selection is not where strategic or creative advantage is created. It’s a utility decision.
The most troubling word Sadoun uses is his description of the three big groups as different “models.” Machines have models. Cars have models. Large language systems have models. When did the brand-specific, market-specific, human art of communication become a choice of three “models,” as if there were only Plans A, B, and C on a fixed menu?
Over many years, holding companies have commoditized what advertising and media once were. They’ve smoothed rough edges, marginalized awkward characters, and systemically removed challenger thinkers who created any friction. They’ve optimized integrated systems that plug tidily into a client’s own machine, as interchangeable as petrol stations.
When agency choice is about “which model best fits our structure,” decisions no longer reflect the transformative potential of people, skills, and imagination. You’re not selecting a partner; you’re choosing an operating system.
Don’t just blame procurement or holdcos – blame the brands
Procurement has grown more dominant. Holdcos have been obsessed with efficiencies and transformation narratives. None of this is surprising. But the cumulative effect is that short-term value and efficiency have been systematically prioritized over finding agencies/people who can challenge how a brand thinks and what it could become.
Marketers let this happen. They allowed pitches to morph from strategic/creative crucibles into calculation exercises. They watched as evaluation shifted from “Who will challenge us in the right way?” to “Who ticks the boxes most neatly?”
Sadoun’s own description of client behavior, in his interview with The Drum, is revealing: “More and more clients know exactly what they want. They consider it is way more efficient to spend their time and their money digging deeper and kicking the tires of the partner they are interested in, rather than organizing a beauty contest for months that basically disturbs the entire organization and makes them lose focus on their business.”
If we accept that clients “know exactly what they want,” and that pitches are a nuisance that “disturbs the entire organization,” the next step is bleakly obvious: why use agencies at all? Why not just run an internal execution team to operate the marketing machine?
Brands no longer look for partners who will positively challenge them. They are buying ready-made suits in three colors. Every time a pitch is allowed to become a safe, uninspired, low-friction decision, the industry sinks a little further into mediocrity.
For whom the bell tolls
John Donne’s line, popularized by Hemingway – “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” – could have been written for this moment. When someone died, the church bell rang, and villagers sent someone to find out who it tolled for. Donne’s point was that it always tolls for all of us because we are all part of the same whole.
When Sadoun proudly laid out his vision of a simplified, consolidated holding company landscape, he was tolling the bell for the death of what the advertising and media industry once stood for: deep insight, disruptive ideas, innovation, imagination and the people in it.
Five major agency groups have collectively cut more than 26,000 jobs in just 18 months, under headings like “AI efficiency savings” and “model transformation.” Famous agency brands have had their identities stripped away and folded into corporate entities. DDB, FCB, Wunderman, JWT disappeared. These weren’t random sets of initials. They represented change philosophies.
In the 1980s, Emmerson Foote, Fairfax Cone, and Don Belding developed a matrix exploring whether a purchase decision was high- or low-involvement and driven by thinking or feeling. It changed how agencies investigated audiences and planned campaigns.
Lester Wunderman, dubbed the father of direct marketing, didn’t simply tweak media spend. His agency invented entirely new mechanics: toll-free 1-800 numbers and the first-ever customer rewards program for American Express.
James Walter Thompson grasped the potential of a full-service agency model built on powerful emotional relationships between brands and consumers.
DDB, created by Ned Doyle, Maxwell Dane, and Bill Bernbach, replaced formulaic, shouty hard-sell with minimal, intelligent, profoundly honest creative storytelling.
These names represented people and thinking, not “models.”
What does a three-model world do to talent?
In the short term, fear keeps people put. When thousands of jobs have been cut and options limited, the instinct is to avoid making noise. Don’t challenge. Don’t rock the big boat. Service the model.
Over time, that instinct ossifies. People become reluctant even to suggest change, for fear of destabilizing a vast machine. Careers become centered on survival, not impact.
The future consequence is obvious. Genuinely different thinkers, the troublemakers, misfits, and round pegs in square holes, either leave for independent agencies or exit the industry altogether. Future generations who might once have seen advertising as a place to think differently look elsewhere. The industry becomes optimized around models rather than minds.
When did brands stop wanting to be challenged?
For decades, the rationale for hiring an agency was that it brought external stimulus, intellectual friction, and fresh, sometimes uncomfortable, perspective. Pitches weren’t tedious “beauty contests” or price-comparison tests. They represented opportunities for disruptive change. Different agencies brought different philosophies, processes, and people. That was why clients staged reviews. They chose agencies because those agencies challenged them and, on a basic human level, they had genuine chemistry.
Look at what Steve Jobs did when he returned to a struggling Apple in 1997. Faced with a near-bankrupt company, he didn’t call in a holding-company procurement deck. He initiated a rapid, high stakes review among a handful of elite agencies. TBWA\Chiat\Day won with ‘Think Different’ and the ‘Here’s to the crazy ones’ script. Jobs’ first reaction was blunt: he called it “shit.” But he was challenged, persuaded, and changed his mind. It turned into a defining chapter in Apple’s turnaround.
At one point, CMOs put serious thought into developing pitch briefs, treating them as rare, golden opportunities for change. Media agency people sat with business leaders, not just procurement intermediaries. Now, in too many cases, pitches are contained within rigid processes run by controllers and advisors, and the goal is to minimize disruption rather than find better thinking. If Sadoun is right about where we are heading, fewer pitches will happen at all.
Regression to the mean: the risk of ‘best practice’ pitches
The phrase ‘pitch best practice’ sounds reassuring. It’s a contradiction in terms. Best practice quickly becomes code for ‘what everyone else is doing.’ Once brands adopt identical RFP templates, use the same scoring systems, and repeatedly shortlist the same three holding companies, they are engineering regression to the mean. The more average inputs you aggregate, the more predictably you land on an average output.
Outside the holding-company universe, the independent sector teems with entrepreneurial energy. In the UK alone, more than 25,000 independent agencies span creative, communications, marketing, and media. Many were founded by people who left holding companies specifically because they felt constrained.
Twenty-five thousand agencies are too many to navigate. But that is precisely what pitch consultants and procurement specialists should be doing. Their job should be to explore that ecosystem, filter it, and surface hidden gems, the rogue operators and challenger minds who might see your problem completely differently.
Instead of simply presenting the usual suspects, they should include a ‘mystery house,’ an option that doesn’t fit the model but might fix the real problem. Steve Jobs would never have accepted a list of three giant holdcos as the horizon of possibility. Why should you?
Treat pitches as catalysts for transformation, not admin
In 2009, John Lewis reignited its brand after a competitive pitch won by then-independent Adam&Eve. Working with Craig Inglis, then head of brand communication, the agency helped reshape John Lewis from the inside out. One pitch created a partnership that lasted 14 years and delivered some of the most iconic campaigns of modern times.
McKinsey’s State of Marketing Europe 2026 report ranks branding as the top priority for senior marketers. It beats performance marketing, martech investments, and generative AI, which ranks 17th out of 20.
When leaders say they must sharpen value propositions and stand out in an overcrowded marketplace, why narrow pitch processes and limit innovation options? If you want distinctiveness, you don’t achieve it by funneling all decisions through the same processes with the same players. You relearn how to brief laterally, asking for bigger, brand-level change, and seek a variety of challenging, independent perspectives alongside the big networks.
Independents pushing back
If holding companies try to standardize, many independents are helping brands rediscover the value of proper briefing and pitching. Stephen Knight, founder of Pimento, the UK’s largest independent marketing, and communications network, which connects brands with over 190 independent agencies and more than 6,500 specialists, recently launched an initiative called the ‘Brief Exchange.’ As Knight put it: “We created this initiative, not because brands need another briefing template, but because the conversation around what makes a good brief has never been more important.”
The industry’s problem is not the paperwork. It’s the mindset. Do you want to be genuinely challenged, or just reassured that you have selected the right ‘model’?
Two possible futures: Sadoun is either right – or spectacularly wrong
Future one: Sadoun is right. The bell keeps tolling. The industry continues to consolidate. Innovation, challenge, and personality drain away. Pitches dwindle. The curious, the ambitious, the misfits move on.
Future two: brands and independent agencies fight back. Sadoun’s vision is filed alongside some of history’s most famous misjudgments: Harry Warner of Warner Bros asking in 1927, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” Dick Rowe of Decca Records telling Brian Epstein, “Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr Epstein,” as he rejected The Beatles.
Stop kicking tires
The smart CEO, or CMO, who actually wants brand advancement rather than
maintenance should resist what is convenient and “sensible.” Stop treating
advertising and media as a mechanical act and viewing pitches as a search for
the most efficient fit.
Design your pitch
process with inbuilt strategic friction
Expect your own assumptions to be challenged before anyone shows you a
spreadsheet. If nothing makes you uncomfortable, you are not being stretched.
Look beyond ‘The Big
Three’
Insist your advisors bring you independent agencies and challenger minds, not
just default options.
Seek change
Treat major pitches as rare opportunities to inject fresh thinking and radical
ideas into your business, not a burdensome project for procurement to “manage.”
Don’t brief
normally, brief radically
Keep an open mind about what a good answer might look like.
The bell is tolling for what advertising and media thinking used to bring. The only real question is whether a brand lets it toll for them too.
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