Industry on edge as new leadership for merged Omnicom–IPG set to be revealed today
With the Omnicom–IPG leadership lineup set to be unveiled today, the advertising industry braces for a historic power reset that could redraw India’s agency hierarchy and decide the fate of its biggest creative and media chiefs
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As the global merger between Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG) reaches its denouement, the advertising world is bracing for a major reset: on December 1, the merged entity’s full leadership structure, global and India-specific, will be unveiled.
For India, one of the fastest-growing ad markets, with double-digit spend growth forecast for 2026, this announcement is especially consequential.
Omnicom–IPG deal: India leaders to watch
The question on everyone’s mind: who holds power in the new agency giant? Who leads the media business, who runs creative? This decision will reshape the industry’s hierarchy.
The shake-up, described as “a once-in-a-generation reset” for the country’s agency landscape, with top leaders across legacy networks now scrambling for control, and not all are guaranteed a spot in the new order.
In parallel, veteran ad-industry voice Sir Martin Sorrell called the merger a pivotal turning point. In an interview with Storyboard18 recently, he argued that the deal reflects a broader trend: legacy advertising infrastructure built around shrinking “traditional media” is becoming unsustainable, while future value lies in digital, data, and analytics.
Sorrell warned that this consolidation isn’t about aggressive growth, but survival: a defensive move to shrink bloated legacy operations and reorient around a leaner, digitally powered core.
Thus, December 1 isn’t just a date on corporate calendar. It’s the moment when the new power structure of global advertising and by extension India’s ad-holding order becomes concrete.
Clients, brands, and competitor agencies alike are watching: leadership will determine who gets big pitches, who retains talent, which agency banners survive, and how India’s creativity and media buys get organised for the next decade.
Who’s on the Shortlist and Why Their Fate Matters
Among the names widely discussed as probable power players in the new Indian leadership:
- Prasoon Joshi (McCann Worldgroup India) — with a strong creative legacy and decades of iconic work, he is seen as the frontrunner to lead the creative wing of the merged entity.
- Shashi Sinha — former head at IPG Mediabrands India, now elevated to an advisory role. With his institutional memory and deep client relationships, he is likely to play a stabilising role, possibly guiding integration and client continuity.
- Amardeep Singh vs Kartik Sharma — both media-business veterans from legacy IPG and Omnicom respectively. The merger essentially pits them in a leadership contest for consolidated media operations in India. Their win or loss will likely determine media-buying power, client servicing portfolios, and organisational structure going forward.
Other senior creatives, from networks such as DDB Mudra Group, FCB Group India, BBDO India, TBWA India, and MullenLowe Lintas Group , also face uncertainty. Rationalisation could mean consolidation, role redefinition, or in some cases redundancy.
What Global Commentators Are Saying
Sorrell has described the merger as a “defensive” move- not a bold offensive play. He argues the deal reflects a broader structural shift in global advertising: Roughly $300 billion is traditional media, and that segment is shrinking. Free-to-air TV networks are down around 5% in ad revenue and as much as 10% without live sports. The remaining $700 billion is digital, which is growing at 10–20%, led by Google, Meta, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent and TikTok.
Combined, global ad expenditure grows around 5–6%. Yet holding companies struggle because they’re still heavily tied to the shrinking traditional pool. For some groups, 40–50% of revenue still comes from traditional media or legacy creative structures. So the Omnicom–IPG merger is fundamentally a capacity-reduction move. The overcapacity isn’t in digital. It sits in the traditional, declining part of the industry. This deal shrinks that.
Sorrell warned that the merged group will have to cut capacity, potentially reducing headcount from ~127,500 globally to ~112,000, to shed legacy overhangs.
He described the merger as a rational response to structural decline, designed not to turbo-charge growth, but to enable survival and re-orientation.
The Big Six
With the newly merged entity targeting roughly $750 million in annual cost synergies, six of India’s marquee creative agencies, DDB Mudra Group, BBDO India, TBWA India, McCann Worldgroup India, FCB Group India and MullenLowe Lintas Group, also now find themselves under a single global roof. As the merged giant moves to rationalise overlapping operations, creative and media networks, backend functions and real estate, leadership stability will likely decide which of these storied agencies survive intact and which are scooped up, merged or shuttered.
In effect, the next Decemebr 1 could determine whether India’s Big Six transform into a unified creative powerhouse, or whether this becomes the most dramatic consolidation the industry has ever witnessed, redrawing agency hierarchies, client relationships and creative identities.
