Agents and Creators: Ndidi Oteh’s Growth Plan for Accenture Song

Ndidi Oteh had big shoes to fill when she took the helm of Accenture Song a year ago. Oteh became global CEO of the consulting behemoth’s $20 billion marketing arm in September 2025, succeeding ad industry legend David Droga. He had been running the business since 2021, after he sold his agency, Droga5, to Accenture for a reported $425 million in 2019. Originally launched as Accenture Interactive in 2016, before it rebranded in 2022, Accenture Song has acquired more than 70 agencies to service clients across the marketing funnel. While Droga remains executive chairman, Oteh told ADWEEK she took the job on the condition that she could develop and execute on her own strategy. “I was really clear before they confirmed the role,” she said. “I had to make sure it was aligned to where I wanted to take Song and what growth could mean for us.” An Accenture veteran who ran Song’s business in the Americas prior, Oteh made bold moves out of the gate. In July, Accenture Song closed its acquisition of Whalar in what is understood to be one of the largest deals in the influencer marketing space, though terms were not revealed. (For context, Publicis Groupe bought Influential in 2024 for a reported $500 million.) Accenture no longer breaks out revenue figures for Song after a reporting structure change in March. But in a recent note to analysts, Madison & Wall’s Brian Wieser estimated that revenues directly generated from Song’s business are in the low single-digit billions, putting it in line with players like Havas. One year into the role, Oteh is now focused on positioning Song to capture the marketing budgets that are flowing into emerging areas like AI transformation and agentic commerce. Accenture is the differentiator Accenture Song positions its offering as connecting marketing end-to-end for brands, from creativity to commerce to customer service, tech implementation, and beyond. It’s able to tap into Accenture’s C-suite relationships to sell to a broader range of buyers beyond the CMO. Rivals from Deloitte Digital to Capgemini to Globant have tried to leverage their Fortune 500 C-Suite relationships to make similar inroads with marketers in the past decade. But none have grown to command the space Accenture does in the marketing sphere. “One of Song's biggest differentiators is actually Accenture,” Oteh said, adding that Accenture Song is the “part of Accenture that talks to our clients about growth.” That positioning has led it to do work like rebuilding Prada’s e-commerce platform and evolving the booking experience for Radisson Hotels around agentic commerce. Agentic commerce is a big focus for Oteh, where a recent partnership expansion with Google Gemini for Enterprise equips clients with technology, engineers, and programs so they can better operate in a world where they are not just speaking to consumers, but their agents. Beyond the right messaging, that means ensuring the appropriate tech partnerships, data infrastructure, and data taxonomies are in place, she said. “It might be the area that's the least interesting for the normal marketer, but it's actually the area that's going to drive the most value,” she said. And Accenture is already reaping some of that value. At an investor day earlier in October, the firm shared that its agentic commerce pipeline grew from zero in January to $1 billion, with $125 million in wins to date. But clients have been hesitant to invest heavily in AI transformations until recently. A May report from Gartner found that while 70% of marketers said becoming an AI leader was a top goal for 2026, just 30% believe their organizations have the right infrastructure to get there. Oteh said AI discussions are evolving from focusing on cost and productivity to driving growth and reaching new consumers. But the future isn’t all AI. For Oteh, closing on Whalar, which manages about $600 million in creator campaigns annually for brands like Nike and Ikea, was one of the most important deals to get done out of the gate. With the creator economy set to top $44 billion in 2026, and with major brands like Unilever devoting significant chunks of their marketing spend to creators, “there's a full understanding now that it is the medium,” Oteh said. Whalar is already seeing demand and “synergies” with Song, and the agency is hiring, Oteh said. She added that Whalar’s approach—which is about building sustainable businesses versus capturing viral moments—is aligned with Accenture’s. Creators themselves aren’t divorced from the AI conversation, Oteh noted, as LLMs are scraping social channels—which are fueled by creator content—for their recommendations. Media on the mind As Accenture Song wades deeper into these growth areas, it’s maintaining a foothold in traditional advertising with Droga5, known for big, splashy ad campaigns. Droga5 has had its ups and downs since Accenture acquired it in 2019, experiencing layoffs, client losses, and turnover at the executive level in the years after the deal closed. Oteh said the business is now “in line with the growth of Accenture” overall. She believes Droga5 will only become more valuable in a world dominated by AI. “The differentiation is going to be about how creative you are in providing something to your customer that goes beyond just an expression, but sits with them and remains with them.” Accenture Song hasn’t yet waded into media buying in a significant way. But with media commanding the bulk of marketing budgets, there is speculation about whether it needs a media buying agency to complete its offering. The company has set up a media buying solution in Australia and New Zealand that could provide a prototype for global ambitions. In September, it appointed Melissa Fein, who led that buildout in ANZ, to oversee media in the U.S. While Oteh was careful not to reveal any future plans, she was clear that whatever Accenture Song decides to do in media, it “will not be in the traditional forms.” “There is a very different way that you can think about transparency, owning your data, and understanding where the value is actually happening—and we think clients deserve that,” she said. “We're looking at the problem in a different way.” That being said, “we're always going to try and do what's right for where we believe the demand is heading and what our clients want,” she added. Not your traditional agency Though Accenture is often compared to the “Big Four” holding companies by size and market cap, Oteh has no interest in being lumped in with the traditional agency players. “We're not a traditional agency. We never have been, and we don't want to be,” she said. While it's important to keep an eye on where that industry is going, “my surroundings have never driven my vision of where I'm going,” she said. That doesn’t mean Accenture Song doesn’t compete with the ad industry for big assignments. In May, it lost Jaguar Land Rover’s account to WPP, which won a consolidated marketing transformation brief across the automaker’s portfolio. In Oteh’s view, clients are not interested in talking about advertising and marketing in a silo, but rather how they connect to everything that touches the consumer. “Pulling all that together delivers harmonized experience, and that is what delivers growth,” she said. “You're seeing all of the industry move in that direction.” As Accenture embraces AI, it's not without growing pains; the organization laid off 11,000 staffers as part of a restructuring last year. AI is also putting pressure on the traditional agency billing model, where projects are scoped on hours and headcount. At Song, clients are embracing outcome-based work, but many are reluctant to change the way they’ve always managed their agencies. “Most organizations are so used to managing through their procurement process in an FTE model, they're often not ready to get there yet,” Oteh said.She expects that to shift. “It feels very different this year versus last year,” she said. “Everyone has embraced the fact that everything is going to continually change.”

Agencies

Agents and Creators: Ndidi Oteh’s Growth Plan for Accenture Song

A year after taking over from David Droga, the CEO is building around a $1 billion agentic commerce pipeline and the Whalar acquisition while eyeing the media space

UNLOCK FULL ACCESS

Alison Weissbrot

Agencies

Omnicom Nabs Coca-Cola’s North America Media Account While WPP Retains Globally

Dentsu Creative Expands Scope With Diageo Across U.S. Trade and Shopper Marketing

Shannon Nunn Rounds Out LePub NY Leadership Team as CEO

Common Interest Expands US Presence With Mirimar Investment

Marcel Gets its First CEO as Publicis Competes With Off-the-Shelf AI

Omnicom's $900M Cost Cutting Drive Continues in Q3 as Revenues Stay Flat

FTC Approves Publicis' $2.2 Billion LiveRamp Deal With ‘Neutrality’ Conditions

ADWEEK Reveals the 2026 Agency of the Year Shortlist

Havas Grows In North America as It Lags In Other Regions