17496: Mo’ Media. Mo’ Money. Mo’ Problems.

 

Advertising Age reported advertiser concern over transparency with media agencies is still bad—a decade after the ANA published a report alleging shady and unethical practices in the field.

 

The global issue is especially significant given holding companies—including single White operating company WPP—are transforming into media-first enterprises with an imperative on generating revenue and profits. Sorry, but desperation for dollars leads to greed, scheming, and improprieties.

 

Expect advertising executives to elevate their notorious ranking on the list of least-trusted professions.

 

Media agency concerns persist, and are more complex for advertisers, 10 years after transparency investigation

 

By Ewan Larkin

 

A decade after the Association of National Advertisers published a report prepared by investigative firm K2 alleging that media agencies were collecting undisclosed cash rebates from media deals, advertiser concerns about agency transparency have barely changed—and the problem, according to the ANA, has only grown more complex.

 

An ANA survey of 108 member companies released today found 43% of advertisers have concerns about the level of transparency with their media agencies, down only slightly from the 46% who said the same in 2014, two years before the K2 report was published. Among those with concerns, 49% say the situation has gotten worse over the past year, up from 42% in 2014, with principal media—where media agencies buy media and resell it to clients—cited as the primary driver.

 

That marginal gain came as a disappointment to Bill Duggan, group executive VP at the ANA, who told Ad Age that the nation’s largest marketing industry trade group had been “absolutely hoping for more progress.”

 

“The elephant in the room, has enough changed in the last 10 years? No, I don’t think so,” said Duggan.

 

Progress has been halted, experts said, by the rapid growth of the media channels least amenable to scrutiny. Social media, digital, retail media and walled-garden platforms have surged in the decade since the K2 report, and with them the ad tech infrastructure that makes it harder to follow where money goes.

 

“The media that are in ascendancy now are the ones which are inherently less transparent,” said Nick Manning, a former Ebiquity executive who worked on the 2016 K2 report. “When you get ad tech involvement, you get a loss of transparency.”

 

Duggan acknowledged the original K2 report didn’t pay enough attention to principal media, which has become a significant and growing source of revenue for holding companies. Court filings made public earlier this year from an ongoing legal dispute between WPP and former GroupM executive Richard Foster illustrated the scale: a report prepared by Foster in December 2024 stated WPP generated roughly $1 billion annually from rebates and principal-based media buying combined, with principal media accounting for $713 million of that figure.

 

Principal media has grown even as marketers remain uncertain about it. A separate ANA study published earlier this year found that 90% of marketers who used principal media weren’t sure the recommended media was in their best interest, up from 79% the prior year. Many accept the practice as a trade-off for lower fees, with little visibility into actual margins and few contractual caps—a problem compounded by procurement teams, rather than media specialists, often handling these deals.

 

Marketers need to reckon with how fundamentally the agency role has changed, experts said.

 

“It continues to surprise me how the industry tolerates things which, outside of the media buying ecosystem, would be clearly anathema,” said Richard Plansky, who led the K2 investigation and now works at Kroll, a global financial and risk advisory firm. The same practices applied to an investment advisor relationship, for example, would cause public outrage, he said.

 

The positives—and room for improvement

 

The ANA’s latest survey found that 56% of member companies had updated their media agency contracts within the past year, and 70% within the past two years, figures Duggan called encouraging. Those updates, however, have not consistently addressed the most critical issues. Only 54% of contracts specifically cover rebates, and 61% address principal media, according to the ANA’s findings.

 

“It’s a little disappointing to me that more marketers have not updated their contracts to address these issues,” Duggan said.

 

The ANA has tried to make it easy, he added. The organization’s outside counsel, Reed Smith, has published contract templates specifically designed to address both issues, with the most recent update focused on principal media.

 

Many marketers lack the specialized knowledge to know what their agency agreements should cover, often relying on standard supplier contracts rather than bespoke agency agreements, said Keri Bruce, partner at Reed Smith. Even where stronger contracts exist, she said, marketers frequently fail to act on them.

 

“You have to make sure that you’re ... operationalizing your contract,” Bruce said, pointing to audit rights as an example.

 

“It’s your money, Mr. Marketer, you have to manage it,” Duggan said, recommending that companies spending $50 million or more on media appoint a dedicated internal media lead. “Media is just too fragmented, complicated, changes every minute; you can’t just bundle it into another responsibility that the CMO has.”

17459: WPP = Worldwide Problems Proliferating.

 

Financial Times reported WPP CEO Cindy Rose might not earn up to £14.2 million (roughly $19.1 million USD) as previously reported by The Times, pending an investors vote scheduled to happen this week. Financial Times, incidentally, indicated the potential payout could reach £11 million versus The Times’ £14.2 million figure.

 

Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis—two prominent shareholder proxy advisory groups—recommended that investors vote against the proposed pay deal.

 

The ISS rejection recommendation stated the payment scheme “is considered out of proportion to the company’s market positioning and its financial performance,” and there is “no sufficient justification to set her total pay package at a premium to her predecessor.”

 

While former WPP CEO Mark Read’s 2024 salary was capped at £8.6 million, former WPP Overlord Sir Martin Sorrell once pocketed almost £30 million—so it’s tough to dispute or agree with the ISS position.

 

Glass Lewis stated investors should oppose pay proposals given “the significant salary on appointment for the CEO, the discrepancy between financial and non-financial metric outcomes under the annual bonus, and the lack of disclosure surrounding the decision to grant [long-term investment plan] awards at maximum level despite a significant fall in share price.”

 

Regarding the Rose pay package, WPP claimed it had “undertaken extensive consultation with our shareholders on the proposed changes to our remuneration policy, with strong support indicated from the vast majority.” Plus, the single White operating company stated the changes were “essential to align us with global peers, restore growth, and position WPP as a company fit for the future and built to win.”

 

The entire mess underscores three key points:

 

1. Rose should attend all earning calls, seizing such opportunities to justify her salary—whatever the actual amount might be.

 

2. Given the fuzzy pay figures, confusion surrounding organizational restructuring, and overall lack of transparency, WPP should consider keeping Burson, as there is great need for professional PR to hype the company’s progress.

 

3. WPP is a flaming dumpster.

 

17419: Sorrell Subscribes To Payment Scheme.

 

Digiday reported S4 Capital CEO Sir Martin Sorrell is seeking to move clients from billable hours to subscriptions.

 

In recent years, White holding companies and White advertising agencies have been generating the most creative work in accounting departments, finding innovative ways to cook the books.

 

So, it’s no surprise Sorrell—who has always been a financial schemer—would pioneer in payment ploys.

 

Being a pioneer, however, has not yet made Sorrell a profiteer. He might soon concede to work for peanuts.

 

“It’s about change management”: Sir Martin Sorrell says the billable hour is dying, but getting clients to move in is proving harder

 

By Seb Joseph

 

Yes, outcome-based pay is en vogue. But none of it matters if agencies aren’t using AI at the scale the economics require. And that only happens if clients are willing to pay for it. Most aren’t.

 

S4 Capital CEO Sir Martin Sorrell said as much on his marketing group’s latest earnings call yesterday — a cold dose of realism about the hype that comes after the billable hour. For S4, the answer is subscriptions: fixed annual fees bundling senior talent with agentic workflows, brand-specific knowledge bases and quarterly software-style upgrades. 

 

Sceptics call it the agency retainer rebranded. Believers see it as an on-ramp to a world beyond the billable hour. The truth is probably somewhere in between — at least for now. The reasons are outlined [elsewhere], but Sorrell’s own framing cuts to it. 

“The far more important thing is, what is going to be the pace of AI adoption?,” he told analysts on the call. “Because the simple fact is, consumers have adopted AI faster than companies, and companies aren’t doing it because it’s not just about technology or workflow — it’s about change management. And companies find it difficult to do that.”

 

The ones that do are buying into subscriptions. One enterprise client signed up last year and restructured its entire agency relationship around the model. Three more are in discussions with more expected to follow since subscriptions are now baked into every new business pitch S4 runs. By year-end, it wants a quarter of its revenue running that way.

 

Getting there is another matter. For subscriptions to work at scale, a lot has to align: existing clients have to be willing to reopen contracts; procurement teams have to get comfortable pricing outputs rather than hours; rising inference costs have to stay absorbable within a fixed fee; and the pace of AI adoption across the broader market has to quicken. None of those things are moving as fast as S4 would like.

 

“I don’t think anybody in marketing procurement teams is against a change,” said Wes ter Haar, co-founder of Media.Monks and executive director at S4Capital on the call. “Everybody understands that the traditional model really isn’t sustainable in any meaningful way, but doing this at scale in a running business is not the easiest thing to do.”

 

There are, however, pockets of momentum. Chiefly, in automotive and financial services — sectors pushed by existential threat rather than enthusiasm. Chinese EV competition in one case, fintech disruption in the other. FMCG, arguably the most valuable category for marketing groups, is starting to stir too. And counterintuitively, the conflict in the Middle East could accelerate things further: if its reverberations push inflation higher and keep rates elevated, that macro pressure may yet do what enthusiasm alone hasn’t: force the kind of AI adoption at scale that makes the new model viable.

 

“It may be that that acts as a catalyst,” Sorrell said on the call. “If global growth slows, inflation rises and interest rates are stickier — which seems to be the scenario already being built in by some of the analysts and the investment banking firms — that might be the engine for increased tech adoption and AI adoption.”

 

Should that happen, it might finally give the agency model’s critics pause. So far, nothing has — not the workforce automation, the M&A, nor the push into agentic services.

 

Or as as Gartner vp analyst Jay Wilson, put it: “More advanced client-side organizations are starting to pivot to enterprise-wide platforms from the hyperscalers — and the agency AI platforms, which are basically just connectors of Salesforce and Adobe and Workfront, we don’t believe are going to be as relevant going forward.”

 

Which is why the subscription model’s internal economics matter as much as its commercial logic. The pitch to clients is simple: as AI improves, they get more for the same price. Fifty assets a month becomes seventy, no fee increase. But that only works if S4 can keep absorbing rising compute costs inside the fixed fee. With video models and always-on usage expanding fast, pass-through costs may eventually be unavoidable. That would mean variable pricing — the one thing procurement teams are least equipped to sign off on.

 

“On personalization at scale, I would say there’s more opportunity,” said Sorrell. “But on visualization and copywriting, we’re seeing compression — if you charge on time, that is compressed.”

 

As it stands, it’s the latter two where most AI work done at scale is happening. CMOs, despite what they say, see AI more as an efficiency play than an effectiveness one — technology to get things done faster and cheaper, not necessarily better. AI only compounds for a marketing services company like S4 if it can do all three. Without the effectiveness part — the bit where real outcomes can be pegged to results — the agency model becomes an even slipperier slope to commoditization.

 

How S4 got to this point is a sobering illustration. The group reported revenue of £754.8m for 2025, down 11% on a year earlier, with net revenue falling 10.8% to £673m. Nearly half that revenue historically came from big tech — but marketing spend at Amazon, Meta and Alphabet has been essentially flat since 2022, while their AI infrastructure spending has grown over 133%.

 

Tech clients spending more on AI and less on agencies: that’s the burning platform behind S4’s model shift, and the reason subscriptions are no longer just a commercial experiment.

17118: Cannes, Crimes, Controversies, Crumbs.

 

There’s been lots of coverage on crimes and controversies from Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity involving deceptive case studies, unverifiable campaigns, and more.

 

Not sure why anyone is surprised, as White advertising agencies routinely fudge data and case studies, presenting results in positive lights—and lies. And clients eagerly accept the exaggerated hype.

 

This year, trophies have been revoked, culprits have been reprimanded, and processes are being reviewed.

 

Do the penalties go far enough?

 

As previously noted, White holding companies benefit from volume of entries, leading to domination in special categories—and all categories, for that matter. The global giants should be responsible for any misdeeds within networks.

 

If a White—or even non-White—advertising agency is found guilty of bending or breaking the rules, hold the associated White holding company liable. When an award is revoked, why not nullify every shiny bauble collected by the parent corporation? Plus, ban the holding company and its firms from eligibility in future contests.

 

Additionally, charge the violating agency and holding company for costs incurred during the investigations.

 

Of course, there’s no way Cannes would ever enforce such accountability. Mostly because showing integrity could seriously impact its extravagant and excessive revenue-generating schemes.

 

So much easier and affordable to stage performative stunts to protect White women from creepy predators and promote DEIBA+ heat shields—although the latter is reportedly receiving reduced crumbs.

17043: On The Golden Rulers.

For the love of money is the root of all evil. When applied to White holding company honchos… NVM.

16958: IPG & Omnicom Peons Invited To Wedding Shower & Golden Showers.

 

Advertising Age reported IPG plans to prune even more under the guise of restructuring—saving $250 million in the process.

 

It appears to be the equivalent of desperately losing weight to fit into a bridal gown for an impending wedding.

 

Except this event will involve disowning and expelling family members from both sides of the aisle—before and after the big ceremony.

 

And only a select few expect to benefit from prenuptial agreements.

 

It’s a forced marriage—arranged by greedy old men.

 

IPG plans $250 million restructuring after quarterly revenue and profit fall

 

Holding company reports nearly flat organic revenue growth for the year

 

By Brian Bonilla and Ewan Larkin

 

Interpublic Group of Cos. CEO Philippe Krakowsky announced a plan Wednesday to save $250 million through restructuring within its agencies and other parts of the company in 2025.

 

The effort comes as IPG’s fourth-quarter revenue and profit declined. The restructuring includes plans to centralize corporate functions, offshoring and near-shoring in “corporate services and certain areas of client service delivery” and “accelerating progress” in areas such as production and analytics services, Krakowsky said on the holding company’s earnings call. The plan will also include operational and real estate changes for certain agencies.

 

Krakowksy also made a point to respond to “competitors” who have commented on Omnicom Group’s plan to acquire IPG, which was announced in December.

 

“While we understand that our competitors are trying to disrupt what we are looking to build, it bears repeating that the integration will remain very focused and not get in the way of the services we deliver to clients every day,” he said.

 

Krakowsky said that IPG’s $250 million restructuring plan would have “very limited overlap” with Omnicom’s plan to create $750 million in cost synergies detailed last week.

 

More details of IPG’s plan will be reported in April, said Krakowsky.

 

When asked if the restructuring would lead to job cuts, the company provided a statement. “The goal is to design and implement the right organizational and operating structure to ensure we remain innovative and competitive,” an IPG spokesman wrote. “This work will change the composition of some teams as we look to invest in talent and technology capabilities in areas such as AI, identity resolution, content management platforms, commerce and data.”

 

Revenue decline

 

IPG’s organic net revenue fell 1.8% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and rose 0.2% for the full year. IPG’s annual net revenue, or revenue minus billable expenses, declined 2.3% to nearly $9.19 billion.

 

IPG expects organic revenue to decline by 1% to 2% in 2025. (Last month, in a filing related to the Omnicom deal, it issued a forecast calling for a 3.7% decline in net revenue this year.)

 

Krakowksy attributed the fourth-quarter and full-year results to the “impact of account activity” throughout the year. In particular, Krakowsky called out the increased prevalence of principal-based media buying in media reviews.

 

“We were on the wrong side of the outcome in defending a number of very significant media accounts,” Krakowsky said. “It’s worth reminding everyone that the decisive factor on those largest decisions was principal media, and specifically the commercial terms enabled by principal media at scale.”

 

He also alluded to a large healthcare loss to a competitor that “was able to leverage its much greater size to win a significant portion of a large creative account that we had been awarded not long prior.”

 

This likely refers to Publicis picking up a chunk of Pfizer’s creative business last year; IPG declined to comment beyond the earnings report.

16738: Comparing Compensation Compounds Systemic Racism In Adland

 

Adweek reported on the multimillion-dollar salaries enjoyed by CEOs at White holding companies, comparing the obscene annual amounts to the average pay of regular workers at White advertising agencies within the global networks.

 

For example, Omnicom Chairman-CEO-Pioneer of Diversity John Wren pocketed $20.2 million in 2023—382 times more than the median wages of the corporation’s 75,900 drones.

 

Management expert Peter Drucker is probably spinning in his grave over the extreme disparities. The Drucker Principle on the topic was summarized by his following quotes: “I have often advised managers that a 20 to 1 salary ratio is the limit beyond which they can not go if they don’t want resentment and falling morale to hit their companies. … I’m not talking about the bitter feelings of the people on the plant floor… It’s the midlevel management that is incredibly disillusioned” by ginormous CEO compensation.

 

To be fair regarding the unfairness, Wren’s 2023 paycheck is low compared to the salary of former WPP Overlord Martin Sorrell, who took home $65 million in 2014—which translated to 780 times more than WPP drones in that period. Hell, Sir Peanut was awarded an exit package from WPP that wildly surpassed the money most Adland peons will see in their lifetimes.

 

Of course, such examinations rarely consider the financial inequality that might be exposed via weighing CEO wallets to the money sacks carried by people of color and Human Heat Shields in the industry. The 1619 Project would undoubtedly liken matters to the racist relationship between plantation owners and slaves.

16674: Cannes Canned Laughter.

Adweek reported that Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity added a new humor category to its trophy options.

 

The trade journal opined, “The move shows that the industry is ready to lighten up in the post-Covid era.”

 

No, the move shows that Cannes is angling to recoup revenue lost during the pandemic—and ultimately increase its obscenely ginormous cash pile.

 

Quite simply, it’s a joke. And Cannes officials are literally laughing all the way to the bank.

16613: IPG CEO Prunes Plum Pay Prize.

Mediapsssst at MediaPost revealed IPG CEO Phillipe Krakowsky received a 9% pay increase in 2023, boosting his annual compensation to $14.4 million. That translates to a raise of nearly $1.296 million—or, to put it in perspective, roughly $1.296 million more than the average IPG drone’s gross salary.

 

What’s most outrageous is that IPG did not do well in terms of revenue last year—and the White holding company continues to prune and pummel White advertising agencies within its network. Krakowsky also managed to personally profit before IPG lost gazillions after getting dumped by Pfizer.

 

Wait, there’s more. The second highest paid IPG executive was CFO Ellen Johnson, who took a pay decrease for a total draw of $5.2 million—which might point to a gender pay gap.

 

The company’s annual meeting, scheduled for May 23, is bound to expel poop loads of gobbledygook.

 

IPG CEO Krakowsky Received 9% Pay Bump In 2023

 

By Richard Whitman, Columnist

 

Interpublic CEO Phillippe Krakowsky received a 9% bump in total compensation in 2023 to a little more than $14.4 million, according to the firm’s proxy statement issued earlier this week.

 

That’s more growth than the company delivered last year. Full-year organic net revenue climbed just 0.1%. Which was in the neighborhood of the growth delivered by WPP although CEO Mark Read didn’t fare so well in the pay department.

 

Read in fact took a 33% reduction in total compensation to 4,498,000 GBP.

 

Omnicom CEO John Wren leads the pack with total comp last year of $20-plus million, slightly less than he made in 2022.

 

IPG’s proxy statement announced the company’s annual meeting will be held May 23 in virtual format only.

 

The second highest paid executive at IPG last year was CFO Ellen Johnson who received total compensation of about $5.2 million, a little less than she earned in 2022.

16467: Billions Of Reasons Why Havas Is Not Diverse.

 

Advertising Age recently interviewed Havas CEO Yannick Bolloré—poster child for nepotism in Adland—who offered uninspired perspectives on the White holding company that he was anointed appointed to lead.

 

Meanwhile, Maxim recently spotlighted Vincent Bolloré, veritable Daddy Warbucks of the Vivendi Group, the global media monster wherein Havas resides.

 

The Bolloré clan has an estimated net worth of $10 billion, which is roughly $10 billion more than the average Havas employee’s annual salary.

 

So, what’s the point? Consider the following excerpt from “How To Be An Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi:

 

“From the Junior Black Americans of Achievement series onward, I had been taught that racist ideas cause racist policies. That ignorance and hate cause racist ideas. That the root problem of racism is ignorance and hate.

 

But that gets the chain of events exactly wrong. The root problem—from Prince Henry to President Trump—has always been the self-interest of racist power.

 

The source of racist ideas was not ignorance and hate, but self-interest.”

 

Don’t mean to sound discriminatory and judgmental, but can French billionaires really grasp the intricacies of diversity, inclusion, and equity to authentically embrace antiracism?

 

More specifically, can a French billionaire integrate DEI principles to recreate a White holding company?

 

Non.

 

BTW, while relating the global state of affairs at Havas via the Ad Age interview, the prodigal son made zero mention of diversity, except to discuss diversification of offerings. Hell, he didn’t even include DEI while pontificating on the corporate mission to make a meaningful difference to the world. Case closed.

 

Havas CEO On AI, Whether Agency Brands Still Matter And Why It Works With Shell

 

Yannick Bolloré discusses issues at Havas, which posted 4.5% third-quarter organic revenue growth

 

By Brian Bonilla

 

Ad Age recently caught up with Yannick Bolloré, chairman and CEO of Havas, to discuss its positioning versus its competitors, its Shell account, the state of agency brands and more.

 

Havas last week posted 4.5% organic revenue growth for the third quarter, putting the Vivendi-owned agency company in good stead among holding company rivals that have reported quarterly organic revenue results so far: IPG reported a 0.4% decrease, Omnicom posted 3.3% growth and Publicis leads the pack with a 5.3% increase.

 

Havas has made significant moves, such as acquiring Uncommon Creative Studio and promoting two co-CEOs to head Havas New York. Havas has also faced criticism over its Shell account win, which has garnered some pushback from members of the advertising community. Last week, B Corp-certified agencies signed a letter, supported by activist group Clean Creatives, calling for shops that work with fossil fuel companies to be stripped of their B Corp status. This included companies such as Havas, MSQ and TBWA.

 

Bolloré has been chairman of Havas since 2013 and its CEO since 2014. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

 

How do you think you’re stacking up against your competitors?

 

When you look at Havas’ client portfolio, it’s quite well-diversified, quite well balanced. Maybe we are slightly overweighted in health compared to our peers. We have one-third of our revenue coming from health clients, but otherwise, it’s quite well balanced. I looked at the earnings for our top 50 clients and they were all great. Maybe we are suffering less than our peers [because of] better diversification. I don’t like to say bad things about our peers, I just like to focus on ourselves and our clients. And obviously, it’s a very strong year.

 

Have you seen macroeconomic concerns from clients leading to a slowdown in projects that other holding companies have cited in their financial reports?

 

To be totally transparent with you, we don’t really see any kind of slowdown. When I talk to my teams, maybe it would be fair to say that we might expect slower growth next year. But still, I’m a huge believer that our clients’ investment is having a good effect on their business. They’re not spending money just to please their communication partners. They invest money in communication and media because it’ll have a positive effect on their business.

 

Of course, there are things we need to deal with–inflation, the rise of interest rates, which is not easy to cope [with] for everyone, depending on the industry. We also have some geopolitical crises, to say the least. So of course the environment is pretty scary, but when we talk to our clients, maybe we’ll see a softening in the investments, but nothing seems to make me think that next year won’t be a year of growth. When we start budgeting for next year, as I tell my team, I like to quote the Navy SEALs: “Expect the worst and hope for the best.”

 

Last month you entered into a partnership with retail media network Mirakl. How that partnership will benefit your organization?

 

Mirakl is one of the leaders in the e-commerce website space. We have seen a rise in investments in retail media. Obviously, Amazon is by far leading the category. I think Amazon owns between 60% and 70% of brands’ investments in e-commerce websites. But we see a trend from all retailers to go and invest in that space.

 

My belief is that retail media will become the second-most invested space in advertising after digital, but before TV. So it’s very important that we continue to offer the best of the best to our clients. Those kinds of partnerships are really important to us because they can help Mirakl develop their solution of advertising on e-commerce websites, and they can help us to access the best websites in the world and offer website solutions to some of our clients.

 

You expanded your partnership with Adobe. How is that significant?

 

One hundred percent of our creative agencies are using AI today, mostly Dall-E and Midjourney. The only problem I see with AI is around intellectual properties and copyrights because our clients want to have the guarantee that every work we produce for them, they can use it free of rights. Havas belongs to Vivendi, which is a world leader in content and entertainment. And when I talk to Universal Music Group, Canal+ [a French channel owned by Vivendi], or people in the book publishing sectors, they all fear that AI has not been trained on free-of-rights content, and it might create a problem in the near future. So it was very important for me to partner with Adobe, because their tools GenStudio and Adobe [Firefly] have been trained on only content that is free of rights, whether it's free of rights or they have cleared the rights.

 

I’m always amazed when I discuss with clients the amount of their content that is not used. They tell me that between 50% and 80% of their content is wasted. They produce the content, but they don’t really use it. So the journey is how can we avoid waste? How can we be more effective in producing content and using it and also more efficient? And this is why we’re developing this strategy around responsible and meaningful AI together with Adobe.

 

Recently Clean Creatives supported a petition to have agencies, including Havas, to get stripped of their B Corp status if they work with fossil fuel companies. You work with Shell. Can you comment?

 

I read the petition, it’s about other groups, it’s not just Havas.

 

I told the team that I don’t agree with the Clean Creatives and their position, but I’m a huge admirer of freedom. And I like to quote a French philosopher called Voltaire who said, “I strongly disagree with you, but I will fight until the death to make sure you can continue to express your point of view.” I have nothing but huge respect for anyone with different opinions than mine. We discussed with the executive committee about Shell when we were invited to pitch because we were aware of the sensitivity.

 

First, I want to reiterate our mission, which is to make a meaningful difference to the world. We continue to stick to our commitment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. We continue to say that we won’t be participating in any greenwashing, but once we have said that, the question becomes where do you draw the line? My belief is that we will have a stronger impact and a more meaningful impact partnering with every company as long as they’re engaged in the meaningful transition journey themselves.

 

Put the emotion aside and look at what is in the Shell assignment for Havas Media. A huge majority of the assignment is about promoting EV charging stations, which is good for the world. So I’m a huge believer that the most effective change comes from within. That’s why we decided to participate in the pitch. I really want to express my congratulations to the team that has been pitching and winning because it was a fierce competition. We were not the only ones in the pitch, as you can imagine, everyone was pitching. The only ones who were not pitching are the ones who had a conflict in the fuel [industry] already. So I’m super happy that we won and we continue our commitment.

 

I discussed [our clients] with the B Corp certification inspector a few years back, and we had the discussion because we work for those kind of controversial industries in some other parts of the world, and they agreed that as long as we are committed to making things better [we qualify]. I’m still open to dialogue and whatever happens, we will continue to commit to our commitments and our objectives in terms of CO2 reduction.

 

Do you feel like the reaction to the account win has been warranted?

 

I think it’s good to have these kinds of dialogues with everyone, but if I don’t agree, I think I will continue to have this dialogue with the team.

 

Do you have any thoughts on the Wunderman Thompson and VMLY&R merger at WPP?

 

It’s very hard for me to comment. I don’t have all the elements. So I don’t know exactly if it was working or not working. What is sure is that I’m a huge believer in integration and making things simple for clients. Clients want to avoid the complexity of our own internal organization at holding companies. So I believe the more we make it simple for people, the better it is for the clients.

 

Do agency brands still matter?

 

More and more clients are consolidating their businesses because they want to avoid having multiple contracts in different countries. I remember participating in a consolidation pitch for a big pharma company eight years ago in Switzerland. For the first time, they were not inviting agencies, but they were inviting the five or the six holding companies, and they wanted to move to just two holding companies.

 

I asked the CEO, “Why are you doing this big consolidation pitch?” It was one of the first holding consolidation pitches. And he told me, “I looked at it with the team and the procurement department, and we have 3,600 different contracts with agencies around the world. So we wanted to structure and make it more simple and save money,” and it made sense.

 

[The industry] has changed a lot. And that’s true [especially] when [clients] pitch for media consolidation they talk about Havas, Publicis, WPP, Omnicom, IPG and Dentsu. They don’t talk about GroupM or Havas Media.

 

So I would say it’s important to keep the brands and the different agencies to manage conflict, but in the end, the holding company matters much more than in the past, for sure. Havas led the way with our village strategy. I don’t want to say that brands do not necessarily matter, because it’s not really true—especially on the creative business for some very boutique, very creative [agencies] with a strong personality. But at the end of the day, it’s fair to say that holding companies matter much more than in the past.

 

I’ve heard predictions that next year we’re going to see more consolidation of agency rosters. Is that something you’re seeing?

 

I think the trend is here to last in the media sector for sure. We still have some clients that like to pick and choose by country. But still, I think the trend is we will move toward more consolidation. It’s slightly different on the creative side because it’s not true that the same campaign can work in every country. Locality still matters. For example, the cultural specificities in France are not the same as in the U.K. or in the U.S.