An Immortal Tribute to DDB, FCB and MullenLowe

02/12/2025

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02/12/2025

We look back into the Immortal archives to celebrate and remember the great creative from the agency brands we'll be losing from the Omnicom-IPG merger in 2026

This week it was confirmed that three of the biggest brands in the advertising agency landscape are due to be wound down, leaving the industry in a very different shape for 2026. All of these networks have a wealth of game-changing creative ideas in their archives.

FCB founder Albert Lasker invented the morning ritual of orange juice to help sell more oranges. Founded in 1973 as Lord & Thomas, it’s gone through a fair few identities, including Draft Worldwide to FCB, and two years ago celebrated its 150th anniversary. It created beloved ads for brands like Oreos and KFC, changed the culture around women’s sport in the UK with This Girl Can, and, with FCB/SIX presented a new kind of data-driven creativity.

DDB changed the face of modern advertising forever when it unleashed its wry, deadpan humour and mid-century design on brands like Volkswagen and Avis. A few decades later and it invented the Christmas ad battle royale as we know it today when it launched The Long Wait for John Lewis.

And then there’s MullenLowe, which, as Lowe, is responsible for iconic lines like Stella Artois’ ‘Reassuringly Expensive’ and, as Lowe and Partners, was the agency that first came up with the Diet Coke Break (and the Diet Coke hunk). It became a major force in the Spanish-speaking world, not least when SSP3 MullenLowe changed the shape of purpose-driven creativity when it worked with the Colombian army to encourage guerillas to rejoin society.

And, over the years, these networks have all performed well regionally and globally at The Immortal Awards. It may seem awkward and somewhat bittersweet to mention ‘immortality’ in the same breath as these brands which will soon be no more, but the impact of their creative ideas will surely live on. Judges from all three of these networks have shared their time and insight with The Immortal Awards too and will always be part of this very special group. WIth that in mind we wanted to highlight some of the work that excelled and, in some cases, became immortalised.