John, I'm sitting here at the technology show thinking about the technological disruption that has happened to advertising. Is this in response to that? Is this to take on Alphabet and Meta and call back more of that global revenue? Well, it is.

Technology does play a role in this, and both Phillip and I have focused on that in our conversations over the course of the last year. When you cut through quite a bit of what we're discussing, if you look at our industry five years

ago, ten years ago, the barrier to entry was very low. It was; you just had to be a brilliant person with a great idea. Now, in order to properly service clients in this new era, it's key to have those very bright, very talented people.

But it's incumbent upon us to enable them with the best tech and data that we possibly can, so they can garner the insights, the information at scale, so they can react to the environment as needed. And we've each been on that journey, I

guess, as all of our competitors have as well. From an Omnicom point of view, we've made great strides with the creation of Annalect and earlier this year when we acquired Flywheel, the Commerce Cloud that we've been able to put together, and that's progressive.

And today we're working even better with all the generative AI possibilities to create tools for our people. Philippe, on the other hand, can talk to it as well, because he's got a very strong bench. Sure.

Technology is playing a much more important role in our sector, and that's because our clients—the consumers they need to reach—expect a high degree of personalization in the messaging they get and a high degree of

engagement in the experiences we deliver. So, to John's point, he brought Flywheel into the family. It's a company that has this quite distinctive ability to understand everything that's happening in the digital retail ecosystem down to the

individual transaction level. And then, for us, Acxiom, as John said, is likely the largest consumer database outside of the walled gardens. So, if you put those two together and if we co-invest in generative AI, we're

very strongly positioned, we believe, to help our clients navigate this tech-enabled world. How does it strip out costs? You clearly identified opportunities for $750 million in annual cost savings, but the talent question when it comes to generative AI expenses is...

How do you strip out those costs? Well, I don't think—you know, John's been really clear, and I think we are fully in agreement a year in—that it's about enabling the folks who interact with the clients, those

brilliant people, giving them more tools. There are ways in which we're not going to invest more than once, and we are going to look at infrastructure that is perhaps legacy infrastructure in businesses like ours. So, there is a meaningful opportunity

there to put the money against the future. John, some of the concern may be being priced in at the moment because the combined market capitalization is lower than it was on Friday. People are trying to digest how this deal works.

Citi Bernstein is saying the potential for revenue dis-synergy is that rival agencies might steal accounts and talent. How do you make sure that people stay on board with you? Sure. We've always been the place for the best, talented people to come to.

Naturally, there's churn in everybody's business every year. Fortunately or unfortunately, I've been through this process once before, but I did it badly and didn't complete it ten years ago. This one is a bit more thought-out, a lot more thoughtful.

You're referring to the public sale back in 2014, but clients who listen to us and see the capabilities that we've developed between us already. The power of what we're going to be able to continually bring to the marketplace, the changes in focus and the single

point of entry and investment that we're going to make to enable that talent to succeed. I'm not nearly as concerned as the naysayers who are looking for some way to knock the deal. We may be challenged by the odd client or two.

I suspect not, because I think the offerings that we have and the response to those clients is at the core of what we've been discussing for the last year, and that's been first and foremost. So we've been focused on what this is going to mean for our clients, what this is going to mean for our talent?

What is it going to mean for attracting talent going forward and enabling those people, most very talented people, who want to work with and for the very best and brightest and have available to them the most state-of-the-art tools? And that's what we'll be providing. And progress is everyday.

I mean, I haven't even focused in on what the advances are that I'm very familiar with. Sara, but what was going on this morning opening, I thought, okay, yeah. And that has a positive impact, used as a tool made available to our knowledge workers.

And so others will try. Some will succeed, but will wind up at the end of the day with the very best talent in the industry. I think, as we always have, I believe that talent wants to be enabled with the latest and greatest tools.

John was, though, talking about how the barriers to entry were very low, and now they've got higher. But generative AI makes the barrier to entry for new upstarts incredibly low. How do you not believe that? I'm not sure that I would agree with that, because ultimately what

you have to have is connectivity to a very, very broad range of capabilities. And so I think that if you're thinking about it in a very reductive sense and you're saying, well, anybody can create a piece of content, sure.

But the reality is that unless that content is connected to a very sophisticated platform with a great deal of technology and a lot of data, then fundamentally it's not really very useful to the clients who need accountability, need outcomes, and are very sophisticated themselves.

We are, of course, speaking with Philip Krakowski of Interpublic Group and John Ryan of Omnicom. Going back to ultimately this pie that, at the moment, is being redistributed among new players, it's not just a matter of the alphabet. I mean, ByteDance is in there, taking

space, Amazon as well. Do you think ultimately the agencies then, for that, becomes three, will own as much of the $1 trillion market that it does today, or will that continue to erode? Well, many of these players have been competitors of ours for quite a

while. I mean, so it's not new. Some of the tools, some of the capabilities that are being created today, on one hand, are very welcome and usable by smaller marketers. But the larger market, as I referred to,

like Philip was telling me a minute ago, is going to have to consider brand safety. As you do this, you have to bring in considerations. Do you have the right to use your image

and your voice in my next commercial, even though it might be a perfect setting for what I'm trying to accomplish? So there are a lot of considerations. Europe is different than the US. China is going to be different than everyone else.

So the competitive set has always been out there. We, with the resources that we have, defending ourselves in this environment, have been very successful. And we'll continue to be successful. We'll be more successful now. This will be more focused and we'll have

more resources to respond to things that change. Things that change are like a new administration, fully. And everyone's been saying, "What about the regulatory outlook?" I mean, if you are in its global jurisdictions, how confident are

you that this deal actually gets through? Well, to John's point, it's been a long time in the making. We've been very deliberate. So you can assume that, you know, we took advice as we were heading into this, because, to your point, we're going

to be looking at a dozen or more jurisdictions in which this will need to clear that hurdle. And we have a high degree of confidence that that's something that we can achieve. Do you have a high degree of confidence in your client's macro perspective

that they currently have? How willing are people to commit to big campaigns in this macro environment as we do have so much geopolitical uncertainty? Clients still wake up in the morning and they're running their businesses and they're running the factories and they

have to sell their products. Maybe the nature of what they're advertising or the channel in which they're trying to reach their customer changed. But that's what we're best at, and the velocity of that change. And people will do different things to respond to the marketplace differently.

I think the change in administration is probably a positive thing. I suspect the new administration is going to be more business-friendly than the existing administration. So I'm not anticipating—and we've been well advised—that we have to go through

the process, but there are a lot of
competitors out there, so that won't be an issue in the final days.
Now, the whole focus is on flexibility and agility.
Even the people who tend to look

at size and look at the negative aspects
of size, we see size as empowering because it
will give us more resources. And what's key is to keep the agility
and leave creativity to the talented people we both have in our employ
and are responsible for us both being

here today, but enabling them with the
best tools, cutting-edge tools, so they can go to the largest advertisers in the
world and with great confidence, tell them that
it's always changing. Nothing from yesterday exists anymore.
It's all about tomorrow.

Omnicom to Buy Interpublic Creating Largest Ad Company

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Omnicom to Buy Interpublic Creating Largest Ad Company

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