North America Isn't Shocked By Omnicom's PR Mergers, But Questions Are Piling Up

No one in North America seems shocked by the moves - but no one is exactly cheering either.

The main skepticism is simple: mergers may make the holding company more efficient, but it's not obvious what they make better for clients.

Culture is the concern that keeps coming up. Several leaders argue that when agencies are“homogenized,” they lose some of what made them valuable in the first place.

A lot of the criticism comes back to clarity - and the argument that a communications organization should be able to explain an integration plan without creating uncertainty and opacity.

Leadership is emphasizing continuity. Industry observers say the real test will be whether Omnicom can deliver it, for both clients and talent.

NEW YORK - Omnicom's decision to merge Golin and Ketchum and fold Porter Novelli into FleishmanHillard is not shocking many in North America. But even among those who see the moves as unsurprising, the reaction has been consistent: cutting duplication is the easy part, and proving the result is better for clients is much harder.

Bill Davies, CEO of Racepoint Global, offered a blunt assessment of how mergers typically play out in the agency business.

“In the agency world, one plus one rarely equals two,” Davies said.“More often, it equals one and a half.”

Davies argued that while consolidated agencies may look stronger on paper - including in terms of margins - the client benefit is often harder to articulate.

“On paper you'll see better margins, but how exactly does that help clients?” he said.“A year from now, will those combined agencies be stronger than what they would have been independently? We'll have to see.”

For Davies, the deeper concern is what consolidation does to the intangible parts of an agency that clients actually experience: culture, talent and differentiation.

“What concerns me is culture. Agencies have a soul,” Davies said.“How we think, how we strategize, the type of people we attract - those things matter.”

“When you homogenize agencies, you risk diluting what made them valuable in the first place,” he added.

Davies also pushed back on the idea that consolidation is inherently a growth strategy.

“At the end of the day, we're in the growth business,” he said.“Consolidation may improve efficiency, but it certainly isn't a growth strategy.”

While Davies focused on culture and differentiation, another industry leader framed the moment as the predictable outcome of the Omnicom–Interpublic deal - but also as the end of a major era.

“I think it was clear that once the merger was announced, this sort of consolidation was inevitable,” said Paul Cohen, a longtime Ketchum staffer who now is CEO of Attention Comms. “Still, it does mark the end of one of the most respected brands our industry has known.”

Cohen pointed specifically to Ketchum's legacy, arguing that at its best the agency“stood apart” in building a strong, values-driven, globally consistent culture that other large agencies struggled to replicate.

“Seeing that name - and its century-long legacy - recede is worth a moment of reflection,” he said.

More broadly, Cohen argued, the moment raises the central question that has followed nearly every holding company merger: what does it actually create?

“The success of any merger ultimately comes down to whether it creates clearer value for clients and meaningful opportunity for talent,” he said.“I haven't yet seen a fully articulated narrative around how this combination uniquely advances the work or the people behind it, and that will be the story to watch.”

A founder and CEO of a Chicago-based firm, speaking on background, described the acceleration of holding company–level mergers among PR agencies as raising a question“not often asked publicly”: who really benefits.

From that source's vantage point, clients rarely choose agencies because of holding company structure. Many agencies, the founder argued, look similar to buyers at a functional level, with differences mainly in pricing models, positioning, or how firms package benefits and perks.

In that context, the founder suggested, the bigger story is the human impact: what happens to talent and culture during a prolonged period of uncertainty.

“The bigger story, in my view, is talent and culture,” the founder said, describing culture as how people treat one another and what employees can reasonably expect in terms of stability, respect and clarity.

“When mergers happen, thousands of employees absorb the uncertainty,” the founder said, pointing to shifting titles, reporting lines and expectations, and anxiety rising long before any synergies materialize.

For Michael Kempner, CEO of MikeWorldWide, the Omnicom restructuring is also exposing what he described as a widening gap between what the PR industry says it values and what it sometimes does.

“As more news trickles out about how Omnicom is integrating it's PR assets, one thing is becoming clear: there are more questions than answers - and the gap between what our industry says it values and what it sometimes does is widening in plain sight,” Kempner said.

Kempner framed the issue through the lens of trust and relevance, and argued that the integration has made Omnicom - and the industry -“relevant for all the wrong reasons,” including“uncertainty, disruption, and a level of opacity that no communications organization should accept as inevitable.”

Kempner also argued that Omnicom Public Relations now sits atop what is arguably the world's largest PR enterprise - and that this scale should, in theory, make the organization uniquely equipped to communicate a clear integration plan.

“If any organization should be able to communicate a clear integration plan - and execute it with discipline - it's a communications organization,” he said.

Kempner went further, describing what he called an uncomfortable truth of mega-holding companies: PR clients can become“immaterial.”

“Here's the piece many in the industry know but rarely say out loud: for a holding company of Omnicom's scale, a $1M PR account is not a crown jewel. It's a rounding error,” Kempner said.

That dynamic, he argued, can create an environment where clients feel unimportant - and in professional services, perception becomes reality quickly.

“When a client can't get straight answers about conflicts, teams, reporting lines, or even whether the agency brand they hired will exist in six months, trust erodes,” Kempner said.

The company itself is emphasizing continuity. In a note to staff obtained by PRovoke Media, FleishmanHillard CEO J.J. Carter described Porter Novelli's integration into FleishmanHillard as a combination designed to create“something even stronger,” positioning it as a way to provide“more of what clients need right now.”

“Our combination provides more of what clients need right now: teams with deeper sector expertise, faster access to solutions, and the precision to handle complex, mission-critical assignments,” Carter wrote.

Carter also acknowledged that employees would have questions, and emphasized continuity, writing that client relationships and daily work would remain“largely unchanged” through the transition.

For some industry observers, however, the biggest question is whether continuity and integration messaging can be matched by a clear articulation of what the new structures deliver - for clients and for talent.

Lou Hoffman, CEO of The Hoffman Agency, argued that Omnicom's decisions reflect an emphasis on economies of scale, built around cutting duplication across internal functions.

“The decisions this week from Omnicom's mahogany reflect a lack of confidence,” Hoffman said.“Rather than depend on growth to sustain profitability, they're turning to the economies-of-scale playbook.”

“At the risk of oversimplifying, it goes something like this,” Hoffman added.“We have four finance functions, four HR functions, four new-biz functions, etc. Now let's cut that down to two, which saves a chunk of money.”

“I've believed from the beginning that the promise of the IPG acquisition was all about economies of scale,” he said.“Good luck translating that into client value.”

MENAFN16022026000219011063ID1110748482