To Win, Omnicom Must Kill Its Darlings

Now that the $13 billion merger between Omnicom and IPG is actually happening, all attention turns to what the merged entity will look like. 

It’s going to get bloody because this is a merger of equivalents. 

Both have big creative agencies, digital media, PR agencies, and so on. Both run a “house of brands” architecture. And to make matters worse, the merging companies aren’t geographically distinct either. 

I see three possible scenarios.

Option 1 – The Diplomatic Handshake

This gentle option, where everyone keeps their corner office, preserves the big six creative networks essentially untouched: BBDO, DDB, TBWA from Omnicom, and McCann, FCB, MullenLowe from IPG all survive the cull. 

This scenario is the path of cowardice, and that’s precisely why it has a fighting chance. 

The argument is simple: it’s designed to minimize client defections and any talent exodus. 

When WPP merged JWT and Wunderman, they lost Vodafone. When Publicis consolidated, clients fled. Keeping all six creative networks intact means no CMO has to explain to their CEO why they’re suddenly sharing an agency with their biggest competitor. 

But here’s why it won’t happen: Wall Street. Omnicom Chairman and CEO John Wren promised $750 million in synergies. You don’t get that by doubling headcount and keeping all the logos. You can’t maintain six P&Ls, six management teams, six finance departments, and six egos while delivering the cost savings that justified this entire $13 billion adventure. 

More alarming still, this approach fails to address the fundamental problem: Publicis has been eating both companies’ lunches with a simplified model for years. 

Playing it safe now is the riskiest move of all. No one thinks it will happen.

Option 2: The WPP Playbook

Now we’re talking. 

This follows Mark Read’s WPP template: merge the also-rans while protecting the crown jewels. 

DDB and TBWA become one entity because, honestly, can anyone outside the industry tell them apart anymore? 

FCB absorbs MullenLowe in a “merger of equals” that everyone knows isn’t. 

The Martin Agency? Deutsch? They become “centers of excellence” within the bigger networks, which is corporate speak for “your P&L now rolls up to someone else, don’t buy that new apartment”. 

This is where the real savings emerge. One finance team, one HR department, one very nervous workforce wondering if they’ll survive integration. 

It’s brutal efficiency wrapped in a strategic narrative that the market will buy. And that old chestnut about client conflicts is no longer a strong enough excuse for multiplicity.

The smart money bets this is the outcome because it’s been beta-tested and board-approved. 

WPP already proved you can merge Wunderman Thompson with VMLY&R with no significant repercussions. The DDB-TBWA merger also makes brutal sense. Both are creatively respected, but commercially challenged, stronger together than dying separately. 

FCB-MullenLowe is even more obvious.

Four creative pillars gives the new company enough brands to manage conflicts while delivering savings through back-office consolidation. 

The killer app here is that it follows an established playbook. Private equity firms love “proven models,” and John Wren is essentially running a PE play here. The risk mitigation is perfect: radical enough to deliver synergies, conservative enough to avoid client revolt. It’s the Goldilocks strategy, which in corporate America means it’s almost certainly what will happen.

The only question is whether it’s radical enough for the future? In 2024 this would have been a dead cert. But WPP is not prospering, and the world of advertising only gets tougher and more disrupted as you read this. 

Option 3: The Nuclear Alternative

This is John Wren going full Thanos. 

Two creative brands. That’s it. 

BBDO McCann becomes the premium offering, the Mercedes-Benz of advertising. DDB FCB becomes the challenger brand. Tesla, if you will. 

TBWA’s brand equity? Who cares? MullenLowe’s heritage? Irrelevant. The Martin Agency’s independence? A luxury they can’t afford. 

But here’s the genius bit: they create a single platform entity – Omni Cloud – that handles all media, all data, all digital, all commerce. One P&L. One system. One throat to choke. It’s Publicis’s Power of One on steroids. Clients get simplicity. Shareholders get margins north of 20%. And the industry gets what it probably needs more than anything: a reality check that the era of brand proliferation is over. 

This isn’t just consolidation; it’s advertising’s Great Reset.

This is surely the correct answer, and surely not the one that will emerge.

Two brands, one platform. It’s what McKinsey would recommend, what shareholders dream about, and something that would actually compete with Publicis’s Power of One. 

But here’s the tragedy: advertising people are nostalgic. They can offer great advice to clients, but run their own businesses incredibly poorly. 

Point advertising people at a client in a similar situation, and there would be a unanimous push for consolidation. But these doctors never heal themselves, and the board does not have the stones for this level of disruption. 

The Nuclear Option requires a wartime CEO, not John Wren, who for all his significant qualities, is a peacetime general managing decline, not revolution.

The most successful mammal on the planet is the brown rat. They dominate our planet. And the reason for their populous success is grisly: the mother rat will, if stressed, threatened, or hungry, cull a significant proportion of her brood. It’s a horrendous but fundamental act that ensures her survival, and the survival of the strongest of her litter.

This merger is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to focus and evolve. And the question at the heart of all of this is not which brands the new company should kill. That always leads to a soft and partial answer. The proper question is how many brands the new company needs to succeed.

Mark Ritson will teach the ADWEEK MiniMBA in Marketing in April 2026, a ten-week MBA level program for senior managers who never received (or have completely forgotten) proper marketing training. Sign up here.