A holding company for worldwide media, marketing, and corporate communications, Omnicom, has revealed plans to combine its international creative agencies into the Omnicom Advertising Group (OAG).
With the new organisational design, all of its creative agencies will report to a single leadership group. The new arrangement will go into force on January 1, 2025.
Top creative networks, including BBDO, DDB, and TBWA, as well as elite agencies in the Advertising Collective like Goodby Silverstein & Partners, GSD&M, Merkley & Partners, and Zimmerman, will be unified and managed by OAG, the company claims.
Former TBWA Worldwide CEO Troy Ruhanen will serve as OAG’s CEO. Deepthi Prakash, TBWA Worldwide’s Chief Product Officer and International President, has been elevated to the position of COO at OAG. OAG promotes Denis Streiff, CFO of TBWA Worldwide, to global CFO.
According to Omnicom, unifying these agency brands under a single leadership will satisfy client demands for powerful creative solutions. Each will retain its unique personnel, culture, and brand while utilizing OAG’s shared and scaled investments in state-of-the-art tools, technologies, specialized competencies, and AI platforms. More opportunities for the professional and personal growth of talent will be made available by this foundation, which will also enhance agencies’ ability to generate top-notch work and spur expansion.
Leaders of Omnicom’s worldwide creative agency will report to OAG leadership in addition to Erin Riley, CEO of TBWA U.S., who has been promoted to take over Ruhanen’s position as CEO of TBWA Worldwide. These include James Fenton, CEO of The Collective, Nancy Reyes, who was just appointed to global CEO of BBDO, and Alex Lubar, global CEO of DDB.
Ruhanen claims that OAG wants to increase access to resources, technology, and talent located throughout the network globally while simultaneously strengthening Omnicom’s agency brands.
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“We know that certain talents are attracted to certain agency cultures, and our clients prefer to have lots of choices rather than just the one solution on offer. So the agency brands must be strong. But we can use scale to our advantage,” stated Ruhanen.
OAG leadership will find it easier to scale current platforms, investments, and solutions across its creative agencies and clients worldwide with the new structure. For example, OAG can make a cutting-edge platform or method of working available to clients and teams worldwide if a team in Finland or South Africa has developed it.
“There are a lot of innovations that bubble up in markets that you wouldn’t expect. It’s a matter of being able to identify those innovations and say, ‘OK, we really think that this is quite cutting-edge. Let’s move that around the world. Let’s start to educate people about this way of working,” Ruhanen added.
OAG is a reaction to how the digital revolution and artificial intelligence have changed the competitive landscape and the creative business. Scaled access to investments in generative AI, data, and other technologies is becoming a competitive advantage, especially for creative agencies.
Continuing, he went on to state: “It’s probably more relevant than ever to be able to benefit from our scale.”
OAG will assist in facilitating access to talent and teams throughout the network while concurrently allowing talent mobility across various agencies and client teams in response to clients’ demands for more integrated and customized solutions from agencies.
Ruhanen made a statement accessed by BrandSpur digital news platform regarding the calibre of talent that the new structure will be proud of: “In the past, a lot of us tended to hold on to the talent that we have because we were fighting for our personal brand success. How do we really look at getting the best talent for our clients, the best solution, and collaborating together?”
He cited Reyes’ recent shift from TBWA to BBDO and his nearly nine years at BBDO as instances of Omnicom’s talent mobility history.
He disclosed: “Omnicom does not plan to merge or sunset any agencies as part of the new structure and will pitch solutions as OAG or as individual agencies, depending on the client’s needs. We have far greater flexibility to be able to meet the needs of the client.”
The concept is based on a framework that Omnicom, which includes Omnicom Media Group, Omnicom PR Group, and Omnicom Health Group, has applied to other disciplines.
Ruhanen added that although OAG will appoint executives in specialised fields in the upcoming months, the goal is not to establish a: “holding company within a holding company.”
Maintaining strong brands and cultures is a competitive advantage, he continued, while competitors mix agency brands and let them fade into the background. He said he would measure his own and the group’s performance by each of the individual agencies’ success.
