Real Story Isn’t IPG-Omnicom Merger. It’s Emerging Generation of Companies Who Could Render It Irrelevant
Image credit: The Midnight Club
The industry may be obsessing over the IPG–Omnicom merger, but the real story isn’t happening in boardrooms stitching themselves together for survival. It’s what’s happening outside of them. While headlines circle the same legacy networks, a new generation of breakout studios, hybrid ventures and creative-tech firms are rewriting how our product gets made, priced and delivered.
Having previously spent over a decade at an IPG agency, I’ve seen first hand how tempting it is to confuse scale with progress. But the truth is, when two behemoths unite, the result is a consolidation of the chokehold that this economic climate has on creative companies, reinforcing a model already creaking under its own weight. Goliath networks, with bloated systems and relentless demand for ever-higher dividends drain energy, agility and originality from the industry. Behind every major merger is the same financial truth: money flows upward, not into the craft. The promise of “efficiency” really just means shrinking teams and squeezed budgets, so often taking money out at the exact moment it’s most needed.
Beneath the noise of a merger built on yesterday’s dream, a younger universe is already coalescing around new laws of attraction. By building a cultural perspective first, anonymous blog 'Outlander' secured Travis Scott and Justin Bieber as its first print cover artists, reverse-engineering an agency proposition to support it. 'Modem' runs as a hybrid think tank and design studio with an in-built expiration date. Its planned 2030 shutdown is the mechanism: a countdown that pushes brands toward bolder decisions, faster cycles and work that thrives on urgency. And Kendrick Lamar’s 'Project 3' demonstrates a cold truth: that if advertising won’t update its operating system, other creative industries will build their own.
Ultimately, a focus on the old guard only perpetuates our industrial decline. Clients hear their names, read their headlines, and assume that’s where the gravity sits. Compare this to adjacent creative sectors and the ethos is inverted. Fashion is almost pathologically future-focussed. Every season, their entire ecosystem - press, buyers, influencers, critics - flocks to discover the hot new graduate from Central Saint Martins or the new LVMH Prize nominee. The same is true of the music industry where streaming platforms, radio stations, and labels pour their energy into identifying the next breakout artist before anyone else. These industries stay progressive through the nourishment and empowerment of their emergent generations. Advertising too often is caught glaring into its past.
When we focus on consolidation, the unspoken narrative is one of less. Less choice, less competition, and less creative possibility. And yet while big networks converge, the future of our industry can be found in its atomisation - and the abundance that comes with it. More creative companies breaking away from legacy structures, more business models flipping the industry on its head, and more talent choosing a sense of risk and independence, over anonymity and conformity. These are the clubs and cohorts shaping the next civilisation of brands. And gradually, they will earn more of the conversation. Not as quirky underdogs and alternatives, but as serious contenders building the blueprint for the era ahead. Another world isn’t just possible, it’s already here.
