Omnicom to Cut 4,000 Jobs, Retire FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe

Omnicom has announced its new structure and leadership team on the heels of completing its $13.5 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group on Wednesday. The new holding company, led by John Wren as CEO, is organized into seven core divisions. Creative arm Omnicom Advertising, which will continue to be led by current CEO and president Troy Ruhanen, includes TBWA, BBDO, and McCann as its three global networks. FCB will roll under BBDO, while DDB and MullenLowe become part of the TBWA network. All three brands will cease to exist. Omnicom Media, run by Florian Adamski, includes legacy Omnicom agencies OMD, PHD, Hearts & Science, as well as former IPG agencies Mediahub, Initiative, and UM. It is the largest media organization globally by billings. Duncan Painter will lead the Flywheel Commerce Network and OmniPlus, an upgraded version of the Omni platform, as CEO, while Sergio Lopez remains leading Omnicom Production, which will merge with IPG's Craft. Luke Taylor will continue to run Omnicom Precision Marketing and Chris Foster will oversee Omnicom Public Relations. Each division is led by a former Omnicom vet, save for Omnicom Health, which will be led by Dana Maiman (IPG Health) as CEO. She reports to Michael Larson, CEO of Omnicom Diversified Agency Services, who was previously interim CEO of Omnicom Health. Additionally, all clients will have a dedicated lead, or "client success leader," that ensures each is getting access to the right set of tools, talent, and capabilities across the network. These execs roll up into Jacki Kelly, chief client and business officer (formerly of IPG) and Andrea Lennon, chief client experience officer (formerly of Omnicom). George Manas, former CEO of OMD Worldwide, will become chief growth and solutions officer, focused on orchestrating bespoke tech and data solutions for enterprise clients. Omnicom execs Daryl Simm and Phil Angelastro will stay on as COO and CFO, respectively. Former IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky will remain as co-president and COO. All entities with the name “IPG,” such as IPG Health and IPG Mediabrands, have been eliminated. 4,000 jobs on the line As part of the restructuring, Wren estimates that around 4,000 positions will be eliminated globally. "That's going to allow us to meet and exceed the synergies that we promised the marketplace last December," he told ADWEEK. The job cuts are in addition to the 3,200 roles IPG shed this year ahead of the acquisition, and the 3,000 staffers Omnicom let go after announcing the deal last fall. The anticipated layoffs, which Wren said are rolling out currently, will bring the total number of eliminated positions to around 10,000, or roughly 8% of the combined organization's 2024 headcount. Cuts are focused on removing duplicate positions and trimming unnecessary management layers, Wren said. While he acknowledged that the layoffs impact “a lot of people’s lives, and we’re terribly sensitive to it," he described the overall number as “a very low single-digit type of efficiency.” Wren said affected employees will be notified as quickly as possible heading into December so as "not to leave people in a state of doubt." Ruhanen said reductions began Oct. 1. Adamski pushed back on framing the cuts as the defining story of the acquisition. “This is not about eradicating jobs. This is about building a company for the future,” he said. Creative darlings Omnicom chose BBDO, TBWA, and McCann as its global creative networks moving forward because of their clear positioning, established client relationships, and broad international footprints, Wren said. “We’ve made the choice of which culture we want it to be, which brand we want it to be, and which methodology we’re putting our effort behind,” added Ruhanen. Omnicom is also keeping many of its boutique and specialist agencies under the Omnicom Advertising Collective as well as IPG's boutique creative agencies intact, including The Martin Agency, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Lucky Generals, Zimmerman, Mercury, GMR, Carmichael Lynch, GSD&M, Grabarz & Partners, Antoni, Lola, Africa, Serino Coyne, Bright Red Agency, and Merkley & Partners. Specialist agencies such as Alma (which was part of the DDB network), Dieste, TMA, Agency 720, and Platinum Rye Entertainment will also remain intact. Omnicom experiential agencies will continue to report to Ruhanen, while legacy IPG experiential shops will report to Krakowsky “for the time being,” Ruhanen said. He added that employees will receive communications about reporting lines and transitions this week—“basically as quickly as possible" to move forward with the transition. Media and Tech A major focus of the announcement was OmniPlus, the next iteration of the Omni platform underpinned by Acxiom’s Real ID and Flywheel’s commerce infrastructure. Painter said OmniPlus will formally launch at CES 2026 and begin rolling out to the company’s top 10 major clients in Q1. “It will be a fully end-to-end, integrated operating system for Omnicom, going from creative thought all the way through to media execution and reporting through to sales… all linked back to single consumer records by brand,” he told ADWEEK. Paolo Yuvienco, Omnicom's chief technology officer, added that the combined data set is “by far, bar none, the most elite data set in the world” on the buy side of advertising, and is already integrated with Omnicom’s agentic AI tools. Media scale is also an anticipated advantage of the combination. Bringing the two organizations together, at a combined $73.4 billion in billings, will create a media powerhouse that "can get the best commercial deals for our clients and for ourselves," Wren said. Adamski emphasized, however, that principal media remains a "small portion" of Omnicom’s overall billings, but is an important “modern vehicle” for creating commercial value. “People that continue to simply claim that we’re growing because of principal media—it's just not true. But my job is to bring the best possible value to our clients,” he said. What's certain is that Omnicom is building for a world where AI plays a central role in marketing. As Adamski put it: “In five years from now, we will be advertising and communicating with AI more than to human audiences.” Editor's Note 12/1 at 9:35am ET: This story has been updated to remove incorrect information provided by Omnicom about how the Omnicom Advertising Collective will be structured moving forward, including which agencies remain in tact.

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Omnicom to Cut 4,000 Jobs, Retire FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe

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