Lintas Gets a Second Life: Omnicom–IPG merger revives an icon as TBWA\Lintas emerges
As Omnicom retires MullenLowe globally and folds DDB into TBWA, industry experts question whether preserving the Lintas name is a strategic revival rooted in legacy and trust, or just nostalgia with a limited shelf life.
ADVERTISEMENT
When Omnicom announced the retirement of DDB and MullenLowe as global brands, in the wake of its acquisition of IPG, most legacy names that once shaped modern advertising looked destined for the graveyard. Yet in India, one name lived on: Lintas, resurrected now as TBWA\Lintas, surviving even as MullenLowe globally shuts down.
Effective January 1, 2026, all agency CEOs in India : McCann’s Dheeraj Sinha and Rahul Mathew, BBDO’s Josy Paul, TBWA\Lintas’ Govind Pandey and Prateek Bhardwaj, and digital networks Kinnect and 22Feet Tribal led by Chandni Shah, will report directly to Omnicom India CEO Aditya Kanthy. The reorganization sets up a new power structure designed to streamline operations and restore creative focus after months of turbulence in the global advertising industry.
DDB, FCB, MullenLowe killed as Omnicom restructures post-IPG merger, cutting 4,000 roles
For the first time in years, the Lintas name, which spent the last decade overshadowed under the MullenLowe identity, returns visibly to the front. For an agency that once shaped some of the country’s biggest brands, especially Unilever, this feels like a second chance.
Why keep ‘Lintas’ alive? Legacy? Trust? A bridge to clients?
Strategically, Omnicom could have chosen simply TBWA India. Instead, TBWA\Lintas signals intent: preserving a name that still holds remarkable trust among long-standing Indian marketers.
Naresh Gupta, co-founder of the boutique agency Bang in the Middle, argues that this is not sentimentality but pragmatism.
“Lintas has solid legacy and is very good at understanding mass India. TBWA is younger and more global. Because Lintas has large legacy clients in India, it’s sensible that the brand is not retired. In the short run, this is good news for them.”
Lintas’ strength lies in its deep heritage rooted in the Indian mass-market consciousness.
Founded in 1969 as the Indian division of the advertising arm of the global soaps and FMCG major , originally under the name Lever International Advertising Services, Lintas became the creative powerhouse behind many of India’s earliest modern ad campaigns.
In 2000, the company changed its name to Lowe Lintas following the global merger of IPG networks, Ammirati Puris Lintas and the Lowe Group in November 1999. In 2007, Lintas India sold the 51% stake it owned in MullenLowe Lintas Group to its international partner, the IPG. Since then, the agency has been a part of MullenLowe Group, which in turn is held by the Interpublic Group.
Omnicom swings the axe: 4,000 job cuts, iconic agency names retired after IPG takeover
Over the decades, Lintas built and sustained iconic relationships with blue-chip clients, notably hygiene and beauty brands under Hindustan Unilever (HUL). Its portfolio spanned household names, from Surf Excel to Lifebuoy to Tanishq to Tata Tea.
In a country where mass India remains a core battleground for brands, Lintas is among the few agencies that combine cultural insight, deep grassroots understanding and long-term client relationships.
By combining that with TBWA’s global methodology and creative muscle, Omnicom could be engineering a hybrid agency: one that delivers scale, legacy trust and disruption all at once.
In that sense, the new name might actually bring something critical to the table, especially for FMCG, mass-market and culturally rooted brands wary of being treated as just another global pitch.
But will this revival actually benefit Lintas?
There is growing skepticism. Some industry voices believe attaching Lintas to TBWA may be symbolic, temporary, or even counterproductive.
Azazul Haque, Group Chief Creative Officer at Creativeland Asia, is blunt. “I doubt it will help Lintas. They are just removing MullenLowe and attaching TBWA. We should respect past glory, not carry it. Legacy names feel dated today. Leaner, agile companies will win, not global giants making their sinking ships bigger.”
He warns that nostalgia cannot solve structural industry decline.
“Future belongs to smaller, faster outfits. Mergers won’t help the global giants, they are shrinking.”
Similarly, Sandeep Goyal, chairman of Rediffusion, predicts a short lifespan.
“The Lintas brand may not last long. It has no real status in the Omnicom structure and may fade like Contract did alongside JWT. It’s probably unnoticed globally, a footnote that will be ironed away eventually.”
For many, the merger, which included about 4,000 job cuts globally, represents not revival but consolidation. For a name as storied as Lintas, surviving shifts in global ownership and structural reorganisations didn’t help either; it spent the last decade buried beneath MullenLowe, seen rarely as a headline-making brand.
What Lintas gains: A path out of the shadows
Still, there are valid strategic reasons why this revival may actually help Lintas, if handled smartly.
For a long time, Lintas had become a “sleeping giant.” Once known as the launchpad for legendary creative talent - from stalwarts like Alyque Padamsee and R. Balki to the photographer-turned-adman Gautam Rajadhyaksha, its energy and creative leadership had diluted over years of global corporate restructuring.
With TBWA\Lintas, the agency gets a chance to:
- Rebuild leadership under fresh global alignment. TBWA’s global structure injects not just resources, but creative frameworks and disruptive style.
- Reconnect with legacy clients, FMCG, mass-market and culturally rooted brands, who value understanding of India’s consumer psyche more than global gloss.
- Leverage the digital/digital-first ecosystem as Omnicom merges digital arms (Kinnect, 22Feet Tribal) under central leadership, potentially offering clients integrated creative + performance + digital services under one banner.
- Appeal to brands seeking both heritage-led stability and modern creative edge, a rare offering in a fragmented market where most independent firms are small and niche.
One senior creative leader familiar with the transition commented, “Lintas was never dead, it was just silenced. This merger gives it a voice again.”
For clients like HUL, Tata, Britannia, Tanishq and other brands for whom mass-India insight matters as much as modern storytelling, TBWA\Lintas could offer a bridge between past strength and future relevance. The hybrid identity might help win back trust among conservative marketers, while signalling ambition to newer, younger brands.
Differentiating Lintas vs TBWA: Two philosophies under one roof
To understand how TBWA\Lintas might actually work, or fail, one must appreciate how distinct Lintas and TBWA are in their core philosophies.
Lintas is about depth. Its work has often been rooted in social-cultural insight, consumer behaviour, empathy, and long-term storytelling. Campaigns like Surf Excel’s “Daag Acche Hain”, Lifebuoy’s “Help a Child Reach 5”, Tanishq’s campaigns around remarriage and social change, and Tata Tea’s “Jaago Re” showed a deep understanding of what resonates with the masses: emotionally, culturally, socially.
The kind of work Lintas has done is built around trust, values and consistency, often for clients whose brand equity depends on long-term relationships with consumers. In many ways, Lintas is the architect of India’s modern brand-building era.
TBWA, on the other hand, is built on disruption, provocation, boldness, and global thought leadership. Its globally celebrated work hinges on challenging conventions, breaking rules, and grabbing attention. TBWA Worldwide describes itself as “The Disruption Company®,” a network of creative minds whose methodology is built to “make breakthrough work for ambitious clients” and help them “own an unfair share of the future.”
TBWA’s strength is agility, global perspective, youth-oriented creativity, and willingness to take risks. In India, that has translated into creative campaigns for urban, premium and aspirational brands, often very different in tone and target audience from Lintas’ core clientele.
Bringing these two together, one steeped in heritage and mass-market instinct, the other global, disruptive and risk-taking, could create a uniquely powerful offering: a full-spectrum creative agency capable of serving both old-economy mass brands and new-age aspirational players.
So is this a revival or a farewell tour?
The industry remains divided. For Lintas, the name may either become a revival story or a brief eulogy.
If TBWA\Lintas can harness Lintas’s legacy clients, apply TBWA’s creative energy consistently, and avoid internal culture clashes, this could mark the beginning of a powerful hybrid agency, one that bridges the legacy of mass-brand India and the aspirations of modern, globalised India.
But if the Lintas name becomes a hollow appendage, a token of sentimental branding without real operational or creative autonomy, then this may simply be the final chapter in a long goodbye.
For now, India gets something symbolic and perhaps strategically smart: a legacy badge that reassures clients, and a creative engine aimed to challenge new-age independents.
The next 12–18 months will reveal whether TBWA\Lintas becomes a powerful hybrid or just a rebranded footnote.
