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.
