The news that Omnicom is cutting 4,000 jobs and sunsetting legacy agencies like FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe should have rocked the industry. Instead, it landed with a dull thud, because we’ve been conditioned to expect consolidation as the default move when holding companies run out of ideas.
As always, the press releases hit the same talking points: efficiency, technology integration, structural optimization, streamlined leadership.
But there’s one thing conspicuously absent from every announcement: Any mention of making better work.
Not better creative. Not a smarter strategy. Not a deeper cultural understanding. Not clearer consumer insight. Not stronger relationships. Not more impactful ideas.
Just consolidation for the sake of consolidation. Business for the sake of business.
The only “product” being optimized is the balance sheet.
Where’s the Plan for Better Creative?
Holding companies love to position these moves as modernization. But modernization without creativity is just cost-cutting with better lighting.
Where are the commitments to:
- Navigating fractured media consumption?
- Rethinking how brands show up in a creator-driven ecosystem?
- Understanding multicultural consumers who are the future, not a niche?
- Building new models for attention, trust, or consumer participation?
- Making work that people actually feel and share?
You can’t create relevance by reorganizing org charts. The work is the product. And not one consolidation announcement even pretends to plan for a better product.
What Happens When an Industry Forgets Why It Exists?
Advertising has one job: Connect brands with people in meaningful, persuasive, culturally fluent ways.
But when holding companies start behaving like private equity firms, they stop being creative institutions and start being financial abstractions. They cut headcount, collapse identities, and merge cultures as though creativity is interchangeable and strategy is plug-and-play.
They’ve convinced themselves that scale is salvation. That sameness is stability. That centralization equals clarity.
But creativity doesn’t scale. Insight doesn’t automate. Cultural fluency doesn’t consolidate.
You can’t spreadsheet your way into a great idea.
If You Don’t Improve the Product, You Don’t Improve the Business
No company in any industry has ever cost-cut its way into longevity. You can survive that way, but you cannot grow.
There is no sustainable business model where “better work” is not part of the plan. And yet, in every statement from the holding companies, the “work” is either a footnote or completely unmentioned. Creativity has become collateral damage in the chase for operational efficiency.
That vacuum is the opportunity.
The Instigation: This Is the Opening for the Next Era of Agencies
While the big networks collapse into mega-structures and become indistinguishable from each other, a new generation of agencies can stand up and say:
We’re centering the consumer again. We’re centering the creative again. We’re centering culture again. We’re centering craft again. We’re centering the thing the holding companies keep forgetting: the work.
Clients aren’t looking for consolidation. They’re looking for clarity. They’re looking for conviction. They’re looking for agencies that actually give a damn about the product.
This is the moment for the independents, the boutiques, the specialists, the culturally fluent, the creator-native, the nimble, the hungry, the principled.
Because the holding companies are busy managing assets. Someone else needs to be busy making the work.
Note: This story first appeared on Linkedin.
Corey Richardson is originally from Newport News, Va., and currently lives in Chicago, Ill. Ad guy by trade, Dad guy in life, and grilled meat enthusiast, Corey spends his time crafting words, cheering on beleaguered Washington DC sports franchises, and yelling obscenities at himself on golf courses. As the founder of The Instigation Department, you can follow him on Substack to keep up with his work.
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