Advertising Age
reported Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun opined on the “trend” of White
holding companies being awarded global brand assignments sans
traditional pitches.
As previously noted, account reviews for major chunks of
business have become closed affairs, exclusive privileges
available only to a handful of White holding companies.
Because M&A reduced the number of big players,
clients are left with even fewer choices.
The commoditization of
Adland makes the limited options indistinguishable too—all White conglomerates
look alike.
So, it’s not surprising matters progressed to the next
level—that is, shootouts are deemed pointless exercises.
During the Omnicom acquisition of IPG last
year, the Competition and Markets Authority
(CMA)—a UK regulatory organization—launched an investigation to determine if
the deal would impact industry competition.
The acquisition was ultimately approved, yet competition
has clearly been impacted.
Corporate Cultural Collusion is
increasingly the norm—standard operating procedure now openly recognized and
executed by conspiring participants.
Non-White advertising agencies—as
well as most independent White advertising agencies—are effectively eliminated
from consideration. Or relegated to consultants
of color and/or Prime Redlining
victims.
What’s happening today is not a trend; rather, it’s an
evolution of underhanded practices and fortification of systemic racism.
Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun on why
more clients are choosing holding company solutions without pitches
By Brian Bonilla
Publicis Groupe is seeing major marketers move away from
formal account reviews, instead opting for in-depth conversations with agencies
they already consider the right fit. Arthur Sadoun, its chairman and CEO,
attributed this trend to the consolidation of rival holding companies Omnicom
and Interpublic Group of Cos., along with shifting technology needs from
marketers.
“What I find remarkable—in terms of trend—is that you
have more and more clients that know what they want to do,” Sadoun said in an
interview, declining to comment on specific clients.
His comments come after Publicis won Microsoft and
PepsiCo, two of this year’s major account moves, without traditional review
processes.
Clients are now realizing “it’s way more efficient to
spend their time and their money digging deeper and ‘kicking the tires,’ as
they like to do, on the partner they are interested in, rather than this kind
of tap-dancing beauty contest that we all know, that lasts for months, that is
a distraction, and that at the end of the day normally gets you to the partner
you were preferring at the beginning anyway,” he said.
The three largest global agency holding companies—Omnicom
Group, Publicis Groupe and WPP—accounted for 91% of holding company media wins
in the first half of 2026, up from 74% a year earlier, according to COMvergence
data cited by Publicis. (Accenture Song, the industry’s No. 2 player behind
Omnicom according to Ad Age Datacenter’s latest Agency Report, sits within
consulting giant Accenture and therefore isn’t considered a traditional agency
holding company.)
“I think we should all be very thankful to Omnicom for
this move, because it is the entire industry that is benefiting from it today,”
he said. The benefit of fewer players, he said, is that “there is a very clear
differentiation in terms of positioning among the three,” which results in “an
increasing number of clients who know exactly what they want for their
business. And that means that they truly understand the difference between the
different models.”
This clarity, he said, is boosting Publicis’ growth
outlook. Publicis generated more than €400 million (over $446 million) in net
new business during the first nine months of the year, the company reported
today. It anticipates these wins to account for 2 percentage points of organic
revenue growth in 2027.
Publicis reported organic net revenue growth of 5% in the
third quarter and reaffirmed its full-year 2026 guidance of 4.5% to 5% organic
net revenue growth.
Publicis also reported a client retention rate close to
100% for the first nine months of the year, which Sadoun said is more
meaningful than individual account win announcements, which can create a
misleading impression of an agency’s overall business performance. “This race
for new-business press releases is a kiss of death,” he said. “Because it gives
a false impression of dynamics, meaning what matters is not what you win; it’s
the net between what you win and what you keep.”
He said new business contributes slightly more than a
third of Publicis’ growth, with the remainder coming from existing client
relationships. That dynamic is particularly evident in creative services.
Publicis’ Intelligent Creativity business, which accounts for 25% of group net
revenue, recorded low-single-digit organic revenue growth in the third quarter.
Sapient’s growing role in new business
Publicis is integrating its technology consulting business,
Sapient, more closely with its media and creative operations to meet the rising
demand for AI-driven marketing transformation. This approach is helping the
company secure new assignments, often without the need for formal pitches,
Sadoun said.
“We don’t have a brief where the AI transformation question
is not raised,” he said. “And one of the reasons why we’re winning—and
sometimes without pitches—is because not only do we have the data, but we have
the engineers and the technology to make it work.”
In production, Sapient is developing technology that allows
clients to customize content at scale using data. On the media side, it is
helping clients modernize technology infrastructure to enable more personalized
advertising. “Production is not about studios anymore,” Sadoun said. “We all
have great studios. The question is: do you have the right tech platform to
deliver at-scale customization connected with the data?”
The strategy is beginning to translate into improved
performance for Sapient. Publicis’ technology business, which represents 13% of
the holding company’s net revenue, returned to growth in the U.S. during the
third quarter. Globally, the practice remained slightly negative as clients
continued to delay more expensive enterprise transformation projects, but
Publicis expects the business to resume growth in the fourth quarter.
