“I’ve seen the future, and it’s very big and very small” 

Richard Robinson, Ingenuity+ executive director

2025 is already set to be the year of the very big and the very small. The very big in terms of Omnicom’s proposed acquisition of IPG to create the largest agency Hold Co in town, with 100,000 people operating in over a hundred countries and the not insignificant number of $25 billion in annual ad spend from brands and businesses.

And the very small in terms of 2025 becoming a halcyon year for start-ups, reminiscent of 2012-2013 when Creature, Joint, Mr President, The Corner, Lucky Generals and Pablo all confidently surged out of the blocks into the everyday consciousness of brands, supported not long after by the hyper-successful UK versions of Droga5 and Anomaly. For the class of 2025, Uncharted Studio, Ark Agency, Dog Cat & Mouse and the yet to be formally named BBM (Brim/Beverley/McMorrow) already look like strong forces to be reckoned with.

Which brings me back to the very biggest of the big, namely Omnicom and IPG. John Wren and IPG’s Philippe Krakowsky recently came to London to meet with a small group of intermediaries including Ingenuity+, the AAR, Aperto and Mediasense to share their plans for the future, and I left impressed.

As a sample size of one intermediary, we’re regularly asked by brands what impact the merger will have on their existing relationships with Omnicom and IPG, as well as the possibilities for new ones from prospective clients, should the deal be approved by the regulators. There’s an air of intrigue and a curiosity for what the deal will hold in terms of disruption and stability. Will scale mean efficiency? Will synergy mean consolidation? And more often than not, will the merger affect the personal relationships brands have built up over years with specific people in specific agencies?

To offset the obligatory question on why this merger will be different to the previous unsuccessful attempt with Publicis, Wren gave a fascinating insight into the diary he’d kept for nine months eleven years ago. He shared how he and Krakowsky had analysed the learnings, good and bad, to deliver the roadmap for a successful outcome second time around.

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The biggest of these learnings is to ensure the people involved are all hand-selected and corporate, with none working on daily business. An immediate consequence for us, as intermediaries, will be that we won’t be interacting with any of the deal-team going forward to ensure there are no distractions on getting the merger done. Seeing industry heavyweights like Jackie Stevenson and Troy Ruhanen in these supporting roles gives me all the comfort I need that the right people are in the right roles to bring this home for the Hold Co and the brands they serve today and in the future.

Central to the future success envisaged by both networks is a model predicated on creativity, credibility, choice, culture and capability. Five drivers expected to deliver a “new era of marketing”, where AI and change will be at the centre of everything.

The ‘ultimate goal’ we were told is the promise “to take more control of the individual businesses by reinvesting resource and attracting more talent”. In other words, delivering a better, more focused, outcomes-led model for brands predicated on the overlapping cultures and market-leading products and services of both networks.

Much has been previously made of the headline statement of $750m of savings and the potential 30% reduction of staff (many of them from back-office or duplicated functions) but I found myself squarely focused on the vision of potential opportunity this merger promises to bring. A change to the status quo which has grown up over time, a desire to really get after the big-bets of AI, data and personalisation. The near and the far, the long and the short, the big and the bigger.

As the regulators in the US, EU, UK, China and beyond make their decisions over the next few months I for one will be watching to see the moves of the very big, as well as the very small as they step in to enthusiastically nip at their heels and collectively ensure 2025 will be a year we all remember.