17647: WPP CEO Cindy Rose, Like Her Predecessor, Is Full Of Shit.

 

More About Advertising noted how WPP CEO Cindy Rose responded to Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun seeing a trend whereby major brands assign business to the top White holding companies sans traditional pitches.

“What’s really important to me is that my clients fully understand the implications of the decisions they’re making. These are really high-stakes decisions with material business consequences and they deserve careful consideration,” said Rose. “I don’t think we do ourselves any favours, as an industry of professionals, by encouraging clients to bypass proper due diligence.”

Um, wasn’t WPP Production recently exposed for trying to skirt around the triple-bidding process by presenting clients with multiple bids from White production sources within the global flaming dumpster network?

And don’t forget the corrupt sneakiness and criminal shenanigans at WPP Media.

Rose is clearly refining her skills as a world-class bullshit artist, mirroring predecessor Mark Read.

WPP’s Rose bites back at Publicis

By Stephen Foster

Is a scrap brewing between WPP’s Cindy Rose (below) and master-of-all-he surveys Arthur Sadoun at Publicis?

Sadoun has made much of Publicis winning major business without a pitch, saying clients shouldn’t waste their time on big pitches but take a good [look] at one agency group (chiefly his of course) as, these days there are only three contenders, Publicis, Omnicom and WPP. Pepsico is the most recent example of such a switch, with Omnicom on the receiving end.

WPP has lost out to a degree and Rose said in her earnings call yesterday: “What’s really important to me is that my clients fully understand the implications of the decisions they’re making. These are really high-stakes decisions with material business consequences and they deserve careful consideration.

“I don’t think we do ourselves any favours, as an industry of professionals, by encouraging clients to bypass proper due diligence.”

She then rather undermined her position by saying, apropos Coca-Cola’s US media (which Publicis pinched from WPP without a pitch, it then effectively resigned it to take on Pepsico): “We won the rest of the world and we have a huge amount of work to do in a very short period of time. I had people, many, many people, pitching for many, many, many weeks over the summer.

“I was with them myself in London and Shanghai and Mexico City and we made a tough call between spending another six weeks pitching for North America versus delivering against what we had already won.

“It was a fine judgment call we made and it’s as simple as that really.” Which rather makes Sadoun’s point.

But it used to be fun when the holding company bosses routinely took a pop at each other, led by WPP’s then boss Sir Martin Sorrell (who could start a fight alone in a darkened room.) Publicis’ then boss Maurice Levy used to rise to the challenge. Sorrell’s successor Mark Read was low-key, allowing Sadoun at Publicis to make the running (Omnicom’s John Wren usually stays above the fray in his lordly American way.)

Is it time for gloves off?

17646: TGIFryday—Popeyes CMO Flies The Coop.

Advertising Age reported Popeyes didn’t love that chicken appointed Chief Marketing Officer in January, dismissing the executive roughly three months after he named White advertising agency Anomaly as creative AOR for the brand.

The search is on for a CMO successor. Anyone got digits for Annie the Chicken Queen?

Popeyes CMO Matt Rubin is out months after agency overhaul

By Jon Springer

Popeyes has dismissed Chief Marketing Officer Matt Rubin less than a year after appointing him to the role, parent company Restaurant Brands International confirmed. The departure adds to significant marketing leadership turnover among restaurant chains as they deal with difficult economic conditions and declining traffic.

Nation’s Restaurant News first reported Rubin’s departure, citing a system message outlining concerns about sales and traffic. According to the report, Peter Perdue, Popeyes’ U.S. and Canada president, will take a more active role in marketing while the chain searches for a successor.

Rubin, previously Popeyes’ chief digital officer, was appointed CMO in January, succeeding Bart LaCount. Under Rubin, the brand conducted a creative agency review that resulted in Anomaly replacing McKinney as its U.S. creative agency of record in July.

Popeyes will continue working with Anomaly, an RBI spokesperson confirmed to Ad Age.

Anomaly’s first campaign for Popeyes, “That Chicken from Popeyes,” debuted in late August, pairing the chain’s Louisiana cooking credentials with a value message centered on its $6 Big Box meal.

Popeyes’ U.S. same-store sales fell 5.2% in the second quarter, but RBI executives previously said its recovery was on track and predicted positive comparable sales in the second half.

Perdue’s message suggests the chain’s performance has fallen short of those expectations.

“Our business performance, particularly sales and traffic, is not where we need to be,” Perdue said in the message, according to NRN. “Despite significant effort across our organization and system, our results are falling short of what we believe Popeyes is capable of delivering.”

RBI reports its third-quarter results Thursday.

17645: Things Are Getting Frosty At Wendy’s.

Associated Press reported Wendy’s—struggling with rising beef prices and failing restaurants—received a buyout offer.

Hmmm. The fast feeder’s longtime White advertising agency is VML, part of the WPP network that recently secured Wendy’s US media business. So, it’s arguably a triumvirate of losers.

Plus, Wendy’s recently hired a new CMO, which could spell OMFG for VML and WPP.

Maybe WPP should bid on Wendy’s and add it to the portfolio of services. Such a move would offer employment opportunities to the thousands targeted for layoffs.

Wendy’s, struggling with beef prices and growing competition, gets a buyout offer

By Dee-Ann Durbin

Wendy’s shares jumped more than 14% Wednesday after noted investor Nelson Peltz made an offer to buy the chain, which has been struggling with high beef prices and aging stores.

Peltz’s Trian Fund Management and several partners are offering Wendy’s $7.35 per share in cash, or a premium of nearly 19% over the stock’s closing price on Tuesday, in a deal that would take the company private. The offer values Wendy’s at $1.4 billion.

Wendy’s, which is based in Dublin, Ohio, confirmed receipt of the unsolicited proposal in a statement Wednesday and said its board has formed an independent committee to evaluate it. At the end of last year, Wendy’s had 5,969 restaurants in the U.S. and 1,428 outlets in 38 countries.

Wendy’s, founded in 1969 by Dave Thomas and named after his daughter, is known for its square burgers and Frosty desserts. The fast-growing chain introduced the drive-thru window in 1970 and went public in 1976. In the 1980s, as it jockeyed for sales with McDonald’s and Burger King, Wendy’s launched salad bars and ran its iconic “Where’s the beef?” ad campaign.

But as the fast-food market grew even more competitive and rival burger-focused chains like In-N-Out and Five Guys expanded, Wendy’s fell behind. Wendy’s share of U.S. burger chain sales fell from 11.5% in 2019 to 10.4% last year, according to Technomic, a market research company.

In recent years, inflation has also hurt Wendy’s and other U.S. fast-food chains, who have seen traffic from lower-income consumers fall as they raised prices to combat rising labor, food and packaging costs.

Wendy’s said Wednesday it is moving “with urgency” to rebuild its menu with a focus on quality and improve marketing and store operations. Wendy’s hired Bob Wright, who formerly led Potbelly, as its president and CEO in May. He’s the fourth CEO to lead the company since 2024.

Wendy’s has been closing outdated U.S. restaurants so it can focus on its more profitable locations. The company closed 240 restaurants in 2024 and said earlier this year that it planned to shutter up to 358 locations in 2026.

Then, last month, one of the largest U.S. franchisees for Wendy’s filed for bankruptcy protection after the chain tried to terminate its franchise agreement. Michigan-based Meritage Hospitality Group operates 314 Wendy’s restaurants in 15 states.

In a letter to the company’s board of directors, Peltz said going private “will deliver the best outcome for the broader stakeholder base.”

“Wendy’s sits at a critical juncture,” Peltz wrote. “The external environment has become increasingly challenging given the significant pressures on the U.S. consumer, economic uncertainty, persistent commodity inflation and intensifying competition, particularly within the QSR (quick service restaurant) burger category.”

Peltz has invested in companies from Procter & Gamble and Disney to DuPont. According to a regulatory document filed Wednesday, Trian’s stake in Wendy’s totals 16.3%.

Peltz considered a take-private bid for Wendy’s in 2022 but told the company in January 2023 that he had decided against it, citing its improved business momentum, according to TD Cowen analyst Andrew Charles.

Charles said an independent special committee is expected to evaluate the proposal and both parties have entered into a confidentiality arrangement.

“In our view, a take-private makes sense as Wendy’s turnaround is likely to be prolonged given the challenged state of the lower-income consumer and soft state of the quick service burger category,” Charles wrote Wednesday in a note to investors.

Wendy’s is scheduled to report its quarterly financial results next week. Analysts expect the company to post earnings of 9 cents per share on sales of $531 million, according to FactSet.

Shares rose 93 cents to $7.07 Wednesday. They have fallen 26% since the start of this year. 

17644: Playing Musical Chairs 2.0 In Adland.

 

Advertising Age reported on the C-suite musical chairs playing across Omnicom and WPP, showing how one CEO resignation/departure triggered a dizzying game with lots of moving furniture and song and dance.

Omnicom and WPP seek to simplify structures and offerings. Yet the constant convulsions complicate and confound completeness.

And the music might be a funeral dirge.

Omnicom leadership changes continue as McCann names global chairman

By Brian Bonilla

McCann has elevated Chief Creative Officer Andrés Ordóñez to global chairman, marking the latest leadership shakeup in the Omnicom Advertising network. His promotion comes just two weeks after Ad Age reported that Tyler Turnbull, the agency’s global CEO, plans to join WPP Creative as chief executive in March 2027, succeeding the outgoing Jon Cook.

Ordóñez will remain chief creative officer in addition to assuming the global chairman role, which was last held by Daryl Lee, who departed three months ago.

Omnicom has no plans to appoint a new global CEO for McCann, a spokesperson said. Omnicom didn’t immediately confirm if Turnbull is still expected to stay until March.

Ordóñez joined McCann following Omnicom’s acquisition of Interpublic Group of Cos. in late 2025; prior to that, he had a seven-year stint at FCB, where he eventually rose to global chief creative officer. Ordóñez will report to Andrew Robertson, who took the helm as global CEO of Omnicom Advertising in September following Troy Ruhanen’s retirement.

“There’s no shortage of big, complicated challenges facing our clients—and that’s what makes this moment exciting,” Ordóñez said in a statement. “I believe creativity does more than solve those challenges: it creates demand, and demand drives growth. I’m looking forward to getting closer to our clients and our people, asking the right questions and turning what we learn into work that moves businesses forward.”

This is the latest change for the agency network, which rebranded from McCann Worldgroup to McCann last year and has seen several executive changes, including the departure of its New York CEO, Amber Guild, which was announced in August.

17643: Publicis Groupe Finds A Voice For Marcel.

 

MediaPost reported Publicis Groupe created two leadership roles for Marcel, the AI doodad that has seemingly generated little use since its unveiling in 2018.

Indeed, for years insiders at the French-based holding company recognized Marcel as a source of confusion, shrugging, and eye-rolling indifference.

Now a Chief Executive Officer and Chief Strategy Officer have been appointed to expand the platform and offer undisclosed client services.

Given Marcel was initially envisioned as a tool to identify and connect talent within the White holding company, perhaps the AI doodad named the two executives. On a semi-related note, was Marcel ever programmed to implement DEIBA+ considerations?

Marcel is probably still years away from justifying and/or recouping the significant investment made for its invention. Hell, the new CEO and CSO are likely uncertain about explaining, utilizing, and selling it.

Publicis Expands Marcel, Taps Hagedorn As Its First CEO

By Steve McClellan

Publicis has created two new leadership roles for its AI platform, Marcel, which began as an internal AI-driven communications and workflow system for employees six years ago, but which is now taking on a broader client-facing role. 

Scott Hagedorn, global chief solutions architect, has been named CEO of Marcel, and Sam Levine Archer, global chief solutions officer, has been named Chief Strategy Officer. 

They will lead the expansion of Marcel which has evolved into a broader platform that uses AI agents and other specialized AI tools to help clients with marketing and business decisions. 

Both executives will continue in their existing roles. They joined Publicis in 2022 from Omnicom and have helped lead the Groupe’s AI and data initiatives since then.  

Marcel’s expanded offerings include Influencer and creator marketing, sports and cultural marketing, content intelligence, and AI-driven search services.  

The company announced the news Thursday, noting that Marcel will combine capabilities from Publicis Sapient, Epsilon and Lotame to connect clients’ business data, customer data and marketing data, while allowing clients to retain ownership of their data. 

Marcel, which is named after company founder Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, is designed to work with multiple large language models (LLMs), rather than relying on a single AI provider, according to the firm.

17642: The Casualties Of Cola Wars & Crumbling Corporations.

 

Advertising Age published the latest Cola Wars dispatches, reporting Omnicom semi-rebounded from its PepsiCo global media loss by winning Coca-Cola North America media duties.

The Coke North America media business had been serviced by Publicis Groupe, who relinquished the assignment after nabbing the PepsiCo global media business from Omnicom sans a review. Publicis Groupe won the Coke North America media account in 2025, pulling it from WPP, who retains Coca-Cola global media and global creative duties. Oh, and Omnicom faced off against Dentsu to seize Coke’s North America media. Expect Omnicom to soon seek grabbing additional Coke business from WPP too.

The winding spectacle underscores how major brand business shifts between a limited number of holding companies. It’s a global game of musical chairs played with no more than four chairs—and rickety ones to boot.

In the end, workers at White advertising agencies and White media firms within holding companies are not only victims of restructurings, redundancies, and RIFs—they are also casualties of Cola Wars.

Omnicom wins Coca-Cola’s North America media account

By Ewan Larkin and Brian Bonilla

Coca-Cola Co. has awarded Omnicom its North America media account following a review in which the holding company went head-to-head with Dentsu, people familiar with the matter told Ad Age and Coke soon confirmed. The decision means Coke and rival PepsiCo have effectively swapped media agencies in an all-important market.

In hiring Omnicom, Coke gains an agency intimately familiar with the beverage business. Omnicom had worked on PepsiCo’s media for three decades until September, when PepsiCo announced it was moving global media to Publicis Groupe. Omnicom will continue to support creative, PR and sports marketing, PepsiCo stated at the time. That means the world’s largest agency company will hold significant portions of business for the fiercely competitive beverage rivals in the crucial U.S. market.

Coke didn’t immediately provide comment, then issued a statement confirming the news. Omnicom referred inquiries to Coke.

In its statement, Coca-Cola shared that choosing Omnicom fits its commitment to align specialized capabilities with market-specific opportunities. “By bringing media, data, CRM, loyalty and creators together within one connected ecosystem, the North America operating unit can move beyond channel-based execution toward more integrated consumer experiences,” the company stated.

Following PepsiCo’s decision to hire Publicis, Coke moved swiftly to review its North America media account, where Publicis was the incumbent, Ad Age first reported in September. WPP, Coke’s global incumbent, opted not to participate in the pitch, setting up a shootout between Omnicom and Dentsu, the latter of which works with Coke in Japan and Korea.

WPP Open X will continue to serve as Coca-Cola’s global creative partner, the beverage giant announced.

WPP also retained Coke’s global media, data and technology business, as Ad Age previously reported, following a separate review that originally also included Publicis. “We’re proud to build on our partnership with The Coca-Cola Company and the trust they’ve placed in us to help drive their next chapter of growth,” Cindy Rose, WPP’s CEO, said in a statement.

Coca-Cola ranked as the 24th-largest U.S. advertiser in Ad Age Brand Report 2026, with estimated U.S. advertising costs of $2.2 billion in 2025, up from $2 billion a year earlier.

The new structure will be implemented in phases starting Dec. 1, Coke announced.

“We began this process with a clear objective: ensure we have the right partners, capabilities and operating model to continue to lead in a rapidly changing marketing landscape,” Manolo Arroyo, executive VP and chief marketing and customer commercial officer at Coca-Cola, said in the statement. “The outcome reinforces our confidence in the strength of our global marketing ecosystem and positions us to accelerate growth through deeper consumer understanding, greater agility and the responsible application of emerging technologies.”

17641: On Integration & Elimination.

 

Digiday reported Omnicom honchos declared the integration of IPG is nearly completed.

Gee, it’s odd IPG is still being discussed, as the White holding company was officially erased almost one year ago.

Of course, there are still restructurings, redundancies, and RIFs ahead.

Digiday illustrated its content with the plant image depicted above, presumably symbolizing harmony and growth. Pruning imagery would have offered more appropriate symbolism.

Omnicom said its integration of IPG is nearly done, and the results are starting to show it

By Michael Bürgi

In announcing its solid third-quarter earnings on Thursday, Omnicom appears to be on track to wrap up its integration of Interpublic Group, which it closed on buying just under a year ago. 

Omnicom CEO John Wren declared as much in an interview with Digiday, during which he, chief growth and solutions officer George Manas and chief technology officer Paolo Yuvienco explained the holdco’s priorities going forward — which include pushing the Acxiom/Real ID identity solution hard in the market, connecting that to Omnicom Media and ensuring that connection extends into all of Omnicom’s agencies through its Omni marketing intelligence platform. 

A quick glance at Omnicom’s Q3 numbers shows consistent growth in organic revenue, which hit 7.2% this quarter compared to Q3 in 2025. Total revenue was $6.42 billion, and net of disposed assets was $6.01 billion. Q2 growth had reached 6.1% and Q1 had only managed 3.9% over their prior-year quarters. Similarly, operating margin increased in Q3 to 18.2%, up from 17.8% in Q2 and 14.8% in Q1. 

“You can see that our growth is improving, as we anticipated it would when we did the [IPG] transaction, and sequentially every quarter this year we’ve been getting better,” Wren said, “The good news is the new Omnicom is formed.”

With only a few non-core assets to dispose of, mostly in the specialty marketing businesses (the company has sold $412 million of assets already), Wren and co. are moving ahead with rolling out more agentic tools in the media space. Yuvienco described the Omni platform has “natively agentic, and has been for over two years now.” He said the mission is to use that ability “to more rapidly turn knowledge into action and action into outcomes. We have been at the forefront of kind of this new agentic revolution before agents were even known to the general public.” 

The execs said they are not resorting to what’s become known as principal AI — a coin termed in part by consultant Steve Boehler of Mercer Island Group, that essentially amounts to giving clients free access to AI tools and products in exchange for a deeper commitment to purchase principal media inventory. 

“We have principal media products that clients opt into using, and they get savings,” explained Wren. “But it’s only a percentage of clients’ spend that we’re talking about for these principal products. And AI is a part of everything we do, but we haven’t tied access to AI or any advances that we see to principal media.”

Manas reemphasized Wren’s explanation, saying “we’re not trading kind of AI credits for proprietary media positions,” pointing instead to leveraging “the strength of our identity with the strength of our media position to create new value opportunities for clients. Sometimes those value opportunities manifest as proprietary media products, or sometimes they manifest as engineering innovation.” 

When pressed on the cost of AI rollouts and use across the holdco, Wren stressed that employees are being taught and trained on optimal uses of AI — while Omni has built-in limits and governors to how it can be used.

 Omnicom Media (which represents 53% of the holdco’s revenue), Manas said, will be the critical juncture through which the merged assets of IPG will be expressed, in light of the current marketing landscape. “The reality [is] that marketing has become extraordinarily fragmented and complex, and AI is only accelerating that,” said Manas, who argued that Acxiom and Real ID are critical to winning and servicing clients given their ability to identify consumers and their habits.

“We’re helping our clients get a deep understanding of their consumers and the ability to target them much more precisely, so that they have that persistent identity to to help solve for that fragmentation,” said Manas. “We’ve also connected that identity into our media scale, and that allows us to reach consumers with unbelievable precision to help our clients get more value out of every dollar invested.” 

And here’s where Yuvienco sees Omnicom’s efforts to push agentic systems and tools into the media side as an advantage. It’s a step toward “shortening the media supply chain,” he said. “That doesn’t mean eliminating the supply chain, but how do we drive more effective visibility into those consumers at the endpoints at publishers? And how do we do it more efficiently to drive more working media dollars for our clients? Ultimately, we’re really pushing forward with that ecosystem.”

Given the recent string of bad behaviors by agents, from jumping out of sandboxes to accessing bank accounts without being given permission, Yuvienco stressed human oversight along the way. “There’s still a human in the loop,” he added. “In a lot of these workflows, especially when money is involved, we’re not putting credit cards into our agents to then form the transaction.”