This was first posted on LinkedIn on 12th December 2024.
Dear CEO
Let's be clear - that $750m in “annual cost synergies” means only one thing: you have a short window of opportunity to save your brand, your job and your people.
So here's what to focus on and what to ignore.
- Ignore the speculation. Let the naysayers say nay. Let them criticise the hollow scale play and talk of desperation and managing decline.
- Ignore Omnicom's share price drop indicating a lack of excitement about the deal.
- Ignore the tidal wave of indies using the deal to underline their own rhetoric.
- You can even ignore the positive voices describing complementary geographies, cultural alignment and data / tech-led synergies.
Instead focus on what you can do differently from today onwards.
- Make the case to stay alive.
- Make your agency brand one that refuses to be aligned, merged or retired. Ensure it shrieks its importance from the spreadsheet.
- Throw out the hackneyed commandments about how agencies stand out - those tablets of stone crumbled years ago.
- Instead, get bold and do something truly different. Re-imagine your offer. Focus on outcomes. Own an audience. Go big on provenance. Sell and price differently. Leverage your uniqueness to command a premium.
- Focus on your team. Address the palpable fear and uncertainty by changing the news cycle. Avoid the daily distraction and reluctance to take decisions by giving them a clear vision for an agency that the market finds irresistible.
- Focus on the right clients. Double-down on the ones you can super-serve; those whose problems your unique experience, beliefs and culture makes you world-class at solving. Leverage results to attract likeminded others.
In short, create what Co:definery calls a 'Market of One' - a lasting competitive advantage, driven by vision, tangible difference and commitment to change.
All of this is entirely possible to do quickly - with collaboration and a proven model to follow.
And if you don't think it’s possible, then best of luck. But remember this - the agency market's not oversupplied, it’s just under-differentiated. When everyone looks the same, that’s the best possible brief for creating something new.
That was true before the Omnicom / IPG news. But it’s now your only means of survival.
Welcome to the last chance saloon. Hope is not a strategy. BAU is acceptance of your fate.
You know where we are. Let’s go to work.
Robin Bonn, CEO Co:definery
