Sergio Lopez on Building the Future of Content Experiences

December saw shockwaves ripple round the international advertising industry at the announcement of the completion of Omnicom’s IPG acquisition. Now we’re in 2026, and as Omnicom enters its world’s-biggest-advertising-holding-company era, the real work of putting the past year’s planning into action begins. One of the big challenges facing the CEOs of each of Omnicom’s pillars or ‘connected capabilities’ is to knit together the teams from the OMC and IPG sides of the merger, rallying them as a single team to help clients attack what’s sure to be a seismic year.

From Craft to Craft - a full circle moment

Sergio Lopez, global CEO of Omnicom Production, is something of a not-so-secret weapon. Not only has he been working on carefully stitching together 86 units and studios into this connected global production ecosystem for Omnicom, but in a past life he was instrumental in the growth and evolution of Craft, IPG’s own production environment, when he was UK and EMEA CEO.

“It's important to help to bring everybody along and very, very quickly, which in my case is possibly easier than some of the other CEOs because it's bringing my former family with my current family together,” says Sergio, who admits that there’s something emotionally satisfying about this full circle moment.

This personal connection is all the more important when you realise the scale of the organisation Sergio is now charged with leading, following the merger. With over 5,000 makers sitting across 20 offices in 11 hub countries, and four specialist studios: Studio Rx (healthcare production specialist), Coffee & TV (motion design, animation, VFX and Colour), NO6 (post), and Mother Tongue (localisation). With Sergio leading the charge globally, he's supported regionally by CEOs Juanita Rodriguez (Latam), Vineet Bajpai (India), Melissa Chan (APAC), Alissa Hansen (North America) and Mariusz Urbanczyk (EMEA).

Craft that works

But while it’s easy to get lost in the weeds of the internal challenges of pulling together a brand new global team, ultimately Sergio is keenly aware that the ultimate priority is to work in service of clients, which are themselves navigating a landscape of great internal and external change.

“We are not just evolving production; this is a new category we call content experiences,” he says. “It’s designed for how brands grow now - and how people experience them.”

This idea of 'content experiences'  is a holistic one that reflects the bigger role that production plays for client businesses and broader scope of the kinds of work that is made.

“We’re at an interesting place in history right now. The company is changing, the industry is changing, and the world is changing. And I don't remember a time where the three of them were changing so drastically at the same time. Right? It’s not just that Omnicom in isolation is changing or Omnicom Production in isolation is changing. It’s changing in the context of an entire industry. Clients are changing,” says Sergio. “We focus on what clients need and what do we need to do for them. And we build an operation, we build a company that fits with that, with our principle.”

And that principle? ‘Craft That Works.’ For Sergio, it’s an ideal, a ‘North Star’ that makes it possible to align fluid organisations as they navigate the shifting landscape of 2026. It’s a phrase that he says is ‘plastered’ in every office, making it clear what Omnicom Production is all about. “‘’Craftsmanship’, which is the world of culture, brand, creative; ‘that works’, which is intelligence and effectiveness, that actually drives results in terms of growth and transformation through meaningful content experiences.”

‘Craft That Works’ is more than a pithy slogan, it’s in the very bones of the new Omnicom Production organisation. Last year Sergio realigned the structure of their studios in order to reflect these priorities. Where traditionally agency or hold co production units would be organised around outputs, particularly ‘video’, ‘print’ and ‘digital’, in November Sergio and the team unveiled a new architecture: primary, scale and synthetic.

‘Primary’ is where the original, brand building work sits with craftsmanship-focused producers, ‘scale’ is all about adaptation, optimisation and data, and ‘synthetic’ is that future-focused hub for generative AI, 3D intelligence, virtual production and it’s the area that’s growing the fastest.

When it comes to the ‘that works’ part of the equation, Sergio is keen to communicate that with clients. Last year, Omnicom Production launched Spend IQ, a dashboard created to demonstrate how hard one’s budget is working. Whether that’s money saved by using particular production approaches or value added by, says, using particular directors that allow brands to tap into particular cultural movements.

Of course, Omnicom is not the only holding company that has attempted to consolidate production or create a giant internal production unit. So what’s the pitch to clients? What makes Omnicom Production stand apart?

For Sergio, there are two key distinctions. One is the engagement with Omnicom Production across the other Omnicom pillars and the status of production within the holding company; the second is the strategic value that the OP teams can deliver. “Some other holding companies struggle to work with their own teams because they don't see their craft or their own internal operations as good enough. Well, here, not only we consolidated, we have our production teams as well. We did very well in award shows this year. Super Bowl last year was great. Christmas was great. We were recognised by the British Arrows, to name a few.

“At a time where clients realise that they move way too fast on the performance side and there's going to be a call back to brand, they need brand building, they need to de-commoditise brands and fight against white label and all the social commerce. They need to have a partner that actually understands how to build brands and understands the value of creativity and understands the body of culture and that is how, strategically, we see our value.”

Scale, craft and the role of independents

While Sergio is primarily speaking to his own people and clients, current and future, there’s no getting away from the fact that another key contingent keen to hear what he has to say is the independent production community, some of whom view holding companies’ production consolidation with suspicion.

On that, Sergio says that while video spend is exploding, spend in traditional commercials on linear is just a fraction of that, with influencers, episodic and other forms of video filling the gap. Internally at Omnicom Production, the teams that are growing are the strategy team, the creative team, the design team, the data teams and tech teams, rather than the areas occupied by traditional indie production companies. That means that there’s a clear role for indies and that’s making culture-defining, high end film shaped by visionaries. “We continue to work with [independent production companies], we need them… they need to define excellent creativity. They need to be the crème de la crème, and that’s where the focus needs to be,” he says, citing companies like Biscuit and Prettybird, directors like Daniel Wolfe.

He thinks the idea that “one individual keyboarding” and using AI could fully replace the work of an excellent director and a crew of 50 is “unrealistic”. Instead he thinks it will become a tool equivalent to Photoshop and Illustrator, but even that will “take a little bit of time”. “That’s why people, when they want to do big, beautiful, creative stuff, they still go to directors that can do that.”

AI and production free from constraints

Inevitably, AI is a big topic for Omnicom Production and clients. Sergio sees three key areas of focus. One is on agentic AI which he says will help tackle “the time that we spend doing things that bring no creative value”. Agentic AI can help automate the complex nuts and bolts of global campaigns such as international feedback, network clearances across dozens of markets. The second is, of course, generative AI, and the third is localisation “because AI is made for localisation”.

The time that AI tools can free up is a great boon, reckons Sergio. Either it unlocks more time for the creative craftspeople or it allows the team to release work in a more relevant up-to-the-moment fashion.

On the generative AI front, Sergio believes that public backlash is largely centred around AI that’s used badly or for no good reason. He points to a campaign Omnicom Production created for cat treat brand Temptations which was about cats disguised as dogs. “We tried to do it in photography, which was obviously a disaster within the first half hour of the shoot. We tried to do it in retouching, and that didn’t work. And then it looked amazing using AI and retouching and a number of other things," he says. “ It was great because AI was a solution for a problem that couldn't be solved any other way. It was the right tool for a problem.”

On the fully AI campaigns with no shot consistency, he recalls the clunky early attempts at CG animated music videos and reflects on how far that technology has come. Where he becomes genuinely animated is where he sees the potential to empower producers and creatives in markets that don’t have huge resources at their disposal. Having cut his own teeth as a producer in Spain, Sergio knows what it’s like to work with tight budgets and he empathises with highly creative markets that are even more constrained. He picks out Kenya as an example of an African market that’s brimming with creative potential. “What's going to happen when you get some of those creators and you free them up from production constraints?”

Looking further ahead with his budget-conscious-producers-hat on, Sergio’s keenly aware that the low cost aspect of AI is not guaranteed, as the tech giants seek to recoup. For now, as data-heavy and imperfect as current AI models are, it’s imperative to “as fast as possible, as far as possible” and for organisations like Omnicom to invest what they can and scale in order to prepare for the future.

Strategic production and thriving in ‘year of tension’

As this ‘synthetic’ side of the business continues to grow, it’s creating real clarity in what Omnicom Productions is looking for in its producers. “Creative”, “strategic” and “open” are key qualities and Sergio foresees that they will be “more strategic partners and less executional individuals”.

“I do believe that there’s going to be less and less need for executional individuals and more about people that can hold the client’s hand saying, "You want to be part of culture, you do need to produce in a smart way so you can afford the things that you need to do, this is how I’m showing you that I’m spending your money where to spend the money and this is how I’m showing you that these are the people that you need to bring."

In 2026, producers’ ability to speak the client’s language and solve their problems will have particular currency. Sergio brands 2026 ‘the year of tension’. Rather than choosing sides, success will come from leaning into the friction of bringing together seeming opposites. Human-made and machine-made. Inhouse and out-of-house. Holding company and independent. Personal specificity and cultural unity.

It’s not easy but what fuels Sergio, ever the producer, is how the scale, tech and smarts underpinning Omnicom Production is the idea of being able to produce ideas that in previous generations would have been killed off for being “too difficult.”
“It’s exciting,” he says with a grin.