When Omnicom announced its acquisition of IPG, the immediate assumption across the industry was straightforward: bigger had just become bigger. But George Manas, Chief Growth and Solutions Officer, Omnicom, believes that interpretation misses the point entirely. Speaking to Neeta Nair, Editor, IMPACT Magazine at Cannes Lions 2026, Manas argued that the merger was never about scale for scale's sake. Instead, it was about creating an organisation capable of moving faster, investing deeper and delivering more integrated solutions to clients at a time when AI, data and connected consumer experiences are reshaping the marketing landscape.
That argument becomes particularly interesting because it runs counter to one of advertising's longest-held assumptions: that bigger organisations inevitably become slower, more fragmented and more bureaucratic. Manas spoke about preserving the distinct identities of Omnicom's media agencies despite operating under one umbrella. While each agency continues to have its own leadership, strategic point of view and client portfolio, they now share access to the group's broader capabilities, including Omni, data and specialist solutions. "It's the best of both worlds," he said. "You get a distinct agency with a strategic point of view and a dedicated leadership team benefiting from the power of the combined offer overall."
Watch the full conversation here:
Having led OMD Worldwide before moving into his current group role, he was asked what advice he had for his successor, Ellen Griffin. His answer was immediate: "Ellen doesn't need advice from me. She's brilliant." Rather than prescribing a roadmap, Manas believes leadership is about giving people the freedom to leave their own mark. Reflecting on his own transition into the global OMD role, he recalled how Florian Adamski gave him the space to "make OMD my own and put my fingerprints on the business"—the same freedom he now wants Griffin to have. Confident that she has "all the experience and the smarts and the client skills to knock it out of the park", he believes every leader should have the opportunity to shape an organisation in their own way rather than inherit someone else's blueprint.
Asked whether the industry's newest giant risks becoming an elephant in a market demanding agility, Manas offered a surprisingly direct response, "I actually see less friction than previously. I see more speed and agility than previously."
For him, the last seven months have been less about combining two companies and more about removing barriers between capabilities. Omnicom has spent much of that period integrating resources, simplifying organisational structures and connecting teams that historically operated in silos. "We delivered a simpler overall structure to the organization so that our media teams could better connect with our creative teams, could better connect with our CRM teams, and so on and so forth," he details.
A major part of that effort has centred on technology. The company has unified its data and technology architecture under a single leadership structure, creating what Manas describes as a stronger foundation for future innovation. Scale, he argues, is often misunderstood. The value is not in being larger. The value lies in what that scale enables. "If you look at our media position, being the world's largest media buyer, we have been using that as a way to unlock innovation and co-development of new capabilities with the likes of Amazon, Netflix, Disney and Meta," he said.
That ability to invest has become even more important as AI transforms the industry. While many agencies are still figuring out how to adapt to the technology, Manas believes the combined strength of Omnicom and IPG creates a significant advantage. "The market we're operating in, specifically around AI, requires investment in new kinds of resources and new kinds of capabilities," he said. "As we've come together as one company, our capacity to invest our time and our resources into AI has grown."
The integration story, however, is about far more than technology. Asked what excites him most about bringing IPG into the fold, Manas didn't begin with platforms or products. He began with people. "The quality of leadership and expertise at IPG is just outstanding," he said. "We couldn't be more pleased to have that talent as a part of this new combined organization."
From there, he pointed to what many industry observers consider one of the most strategically important assets in the deal: Acxiom and Real ID. "The strength of the underlying data and identity asset is phenomenal," he said. Embedding those capabilities across the wider Omnicom ecosystem was one of the company's earliest integration priorities, reflecting the growing importance of identity, data and connected customer experiences in modern marketing.
Another area generating significant excitement is sports and entertainment. As brands increasingly look beyond traditional advertising to build deeper relationships with consumers, sports has emerged as one of the industry's fastest-growing opportunity areas. Omnicom now gains access to IPG's sports assets, including Octagon and Momentum. "Now as a combined organization, we are incredibly well positioned to help our clients not just win in sports today, but shape the sports marketplace for the future," he said.
Even then, Manas believes Omnicom's capability build-out is far from complete. One area receiving continued investment is transformation consulting through Credera. "We see increased demand from our clients seeking a partner that can help them modernize their internal infrastructure, their data architecture, their operating model for agentic capabilities," he said.
Manas also shares, the biggest transformation is happening in how agencies are organised around clients. For decades, agency relationships have largely been organised around specific disciplines or individual agency brands. That model is giving way to something broader.
As part of the integration process, Omnicom has established what he describes as an integrated client leadership structure, designed to give clients simpler access to expertise across the organisation. "This ensures that our clients have simplified access to the breadth and depth of talent and capability in the organization," he said. While this isn't entirely new, Manas said the model has already been successfully deployed for clients such as Apple, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz and Bayer, and is now becoming central to how Omnicom structures both new business opportunities and broader transformation engagements.
Rather than agency-to-client relationships, Manas sees the future as enterprise-level partnerships. "Those are Omnicom-to-enterprise partnerships that are of significant value and benefit to the clients," he said. The objective is not simply to offer more services. It is to bring together media, creative, CRM, data and technology under a single client leadership model capable of driving broader business outcomes.
India, meanwhile, remains firmly on Omnicom's growth agenda. A long-time visitor to the market, Manas described India as one of the most vibrant and exciting regions within the company's global portfolio. The integration, he believes, has only strengthened the company's position. "The combined organization of Omnicom and IPG has gained significant strength and scale in India," he said. That confidence is reflected in recent business performance, with the company securing a mix of both global and local wins since the integration began. "We're really bullish on the growing opportunities there," he said. "I've got high hopes and big ambitions for the market."
That optimism extends beyond multinational accounts. Manas stressed that Omnicom is equally focused on winning local mandates, arguing that the group's structure allows it to pursue both without compromise. "We're as interested in global remits as we are in important local remits," he said. The organisation, he argued, is structured to serve a broad spectrum of client needs. Some require market-specific expertise, while others need multinational, multi-service partnerships. "We're not having to choose between one or the other. We're a big and robust organization that has the opportunity to do both.".
From integration to Cannes, Manas offered another observation. "This has been my favorite Cannes Lions so far," he said. The reason, according to him, is a noticeable shift in the industry's conversations, "There's a lot less talk about hypotheticals." For Manas, Cannes 2026 feels like a festival that is rewarding proof rather than promise. It's visible not only in the discussions happening on stage but also in the work emerging as winners. "This is not work that is just great work," he said. "It's work that is great. That is driving results."
While some have linked this year's emphasis on effectiveness to last year's controversy around award entries, Manas sees it differently. He believes the shift reflects a much broader change in the relationship between marketing and business. "It has a lot more to do with the growing connection between marketing and business and the broader ambition that our client organizations have to demonstrate marketing's impact on the business," he said.
Whether brand or performance, B2B or B2C, local or global, the campaigns gaining recognition increasingly demonstrate an ability to connect creativity with measurable business outcomes. That trend, he believes, reflects a broader evolution in how marketing itself is being evaluated. "We're going to continue to see that the work that wins is more often than not the work that demonstrates integration across media and creative and CRM and multiple consumer touchpoints," he said. Pointing to Omnicom's recent recognition as the global leader in the Effie Index, he added, "That's a really important accolade because it shows the connection between the work and the business outcome."
In many ways, that philosophy mirrors the argument Manas makes about Omnicom's future. The industry's next chapter, he suggests, will not be defined by the size of individual agencies or the boundaries between disciplines. It will be defined by how effectively organisations can bring together talent, technology, creativity, data and media to solve increasingly complex client challenges. And in that world, scale alone is not the advantage. What matters is what scale allows you to build.
