The latest episode of #MediaSnack Live, with Tom Denford in New York and David Indo in London, is a masterclass in how fast the media landscape can move under your feet. In one short news cycle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, the biggest holding groups, the so called Red Ocean agencies, and even the advertiser trade bodies all shift position.
For CMOs, Procurement Directors, and Global Heads of Media, this is not industry gossip. These moves determine who controls your media talent, which commercial levers still work, and how much disruption you need to plan for over the next two to three years. This post breaks down the episode, then turns it into a gameplan you can actually use.
The short version: Coke and Pepsi's media moves redraw the agency map, concentrate even more power in the biggest groups, and create both jeopardy and opportunity for large advertisers. Expect harder commercial terms, sharper competition for top talent, and a fresh cycle of disruption in your own roster.
First, the cola wars have gone fully commercial in media. PepsiCo has consolidated its global media with Publicis. As reported by Campaign, Omnicom had held most of that business for more than 25 years before the switch. PepsiCo chose to move without a full pitch and is building a unified model under what it calls a One PepsiCo structure.
That single decision forced a chain reaction. Publicis withdrew from Coca-Cola’s parallel global media review. WPP stayed on the global brief, but walked away from the North America contest when it became clear the prize was not simply being gifted. Coca-Cola then opened North America to Omnicom and Dentsu, two players that were not in the original frame.
Within weeks, Coca-Cola confirmed a split structure. WPP keeps most of the world. Dentsu retains Japan and South Korea. Omnicom now runs North America. Put simply, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have effectively swapped media partners in their most politically sensitive market.
Behind that headline, the numbers are serious. Campaign, citing COMvergence, puts PepsiCo’s global media spend at about 1.9 billion dollars and Coca-Cola’s at around 2.6 billion dollars. When accounts of that size move at speed, every major holding company feels the shock.
First, Coca-Cola’s original strategic goal has not been met. It went into the process looking for a fully consolidated global solution. It comes out with a more fragmented model than PepsiCo, which now has one global media partner.
Fragmentation is not just an organizational inconvenience. It shows up in governance, inconsistent measurement, and slower global decision making. It also creates more points of failure when you try to roll out data, tech, and AI powered planning consistently.
Second, the commercial leverage story has flipped. Coca-Cola started with two holding companies fighting hard for a single, prestigious global outcome. Once PepsiCo moved, both Publicis and WPP stepped back from the original brief at different stages. That left Coke negotiating North America with a much narrower set of options and an Omnicom that had just been freed from a decades long PepsiCo relationship.
It is reasonable to assume that Coca-Cola’s North American terms will not look like the rock bottom outcome a CMO or CPO might have dreamed about at the start of the year. Whenever the field of serious contenders narrows to one, your pricing leverage becomes theoretical rather than real.
Third, this resets the talent board. Omnicom has a deep bench of people who lived and breathed PepsiCo for years and are now pointing their effort at Coca-Cola. Dentsu, having recently defended Heineken’s global media, as covered by Ad Age, has reaffirmed that it can compete at the very top table. Publicis has just absorbed one of the most complex global advertisers into a new AI led operating model.
If you sit inside any large advertiser, the right question is not whether Coke and Pepsi made the perfect decisions. The useful question is what this tells you about your own readiness.
The first lens is disruption tolerance. Coca-Cola marketers in many markets now have to manage another cycle of onboarding, contract resets, and cultural alignment, with a decent chance that North America will provoke yet another global reshuffle within a couple of years. PepsiCo, by contrast, has chosen a single partner and will focus on building depth rather than breadth.
The second lens is your appetite for concentration versus optionality. A PepsiCo style move gives you clarity, a single point of accountability, and potentially stronger access to a group’s very best capability. The trade off is that you are deeply tied to one commercial model and one set of conflicts.
The third lens is emotional alignment. Tom Denford and David Indo point out that both Coca-Cola and Omnicom are still smarting from the shock of having long term partners walk away. That tends to create a hunger to win that you can harness if you are the client, but it can just as easily lead to bravado and over commitment on the agency side.
Your job as a senior advertiser is to treat this not as entertainment but as a diagnostic. Where is your own portfolio on the same axes of consolidation, leverage, and disruption risk?
Beyond the cola headlines, the episode zooms out to the wider agency market. Tom and David split the field into the very largest groups on one side and a set of hungry mid scale players they call the Red Ocean agencies on the other.
On one flank sit the big three: Publicis, WPP, and Omnicom. They are getting bigger, not smaller, and are increasingly fronting their offers as group level media propositions. Recent branding moves, like WPP folding GroupM into a single WPP Media brand, signal that the holding company badge now matters more than the legacy agency names.
On the other flank are four operators that matter a lot if you are planning a pitch or renegotiation: Dentsu, Havas, Stagwell, and Horizon. These are the Red Ocean agencies. They fight to stay relevant against the big three, but also against each other, often in multi market contests where one big win can change their trajectory.
Dentsu is the clearest example of a group in renaissance. It has defended Heineken’s global media remit, expanded Netflix regionally, and taken part in the Coca-Cola races. That combination proves two things. First, it can defend complex existing clients under real pressure. Second, it gets on the shortlist for the biggest briefs in the world.
Havas, with its deliberately integrated, creativity led culture, looks and feels different to the more industrial models of the biggest groups. Its partnership with Horizon in the United States is one of the more interesting structural experiments in the market, blending local clout with global process.
Stagwell has moved to unify its media assets under the Stagwell Media label. It is deliberately positioning itself as the credible fourth option, an explicit alternative to the big three. New leadership and a willingness to embrace newer commercial models, including some forms of inventory based buying, make it a fast evolving proposition.
Looming over all of this is Accenture Song. Its leadership moves, such as promoting Melissa Fine from its Australian media business to a United States wide media role, are a clear statement of intent. Accenture refuses to rely on opaque arbitrage models and instead looks to keep media as one part of a much larger transformation relationship. That will appeal strongly to some advertisers and not at all to others.
For CMOs and procurement leaders, the point is not to learn every internal nuance of each group. The point is to recognize that you now have a broader set of viable configurations. You do not have to run a binary choice between a single holding company or a fragmented roster of smaller local independents.
The worst response to a period like this is to be a passive observer. If you wait for your incumbent to tell you what has changed, you will always be reacting on their timetable, not yours.
First, update your agency market map. List which parts of your portfolio sit with which groups, and overlay the shifts discussed in this episode. If your main partner has just lost or gained a giant like PepsiCo or Coca-Cola, you can safely assume resource allocations will change, even if nobody admits it in the next quarterly review.
Second, re test your disruption threshold. Some marketers could not face a global pitch right now even if they wanted to. Others are sitting on outdated commercial models that quietly lock in media structures that pre date today’s data, privacy, and AI realities. You should be able to articulate where you are on that spectrum.
Third, sharpen your decision lens. You effectively have three routes: a full pitch, a structured renegotiation, or a measured recalibration of scope and governance. Done badly, a pitch is just theatre. Done well, it is a way to reset the strategic relationship for the next five years.
Renegotiation, which is often treated internally as a soft commercial tidy up, is where most of the jeopardy sits. If you cannot name your top five required improvements, you will default to blunt fee pressure that achieves almost nothing in biddable media and can actively damage your access to senior talent.
Fourth, broaden your consideration set. As David Indo says in the episode, do not casually discard Dentsu when you design a pitch list. It has just proved that it can go toe to toe with the giants. Similarly, think pragmatically about whether a Havas or a Stagwell configuration might give you a different balance of global scale and cultural fit than simply adding another network from the same holding company.
Finally, make space for a confidential, practitioner level view. Sometimes our work at ID Comms is entirely behind the scenes, pressure testing a client’s options before they show their hand to the market. If you want that kind of sparring partner, get in touch to confidentially discuss your 'gameplan' and options to protect your competitive advantage in media.
Because their moves reset commercial benchmarks and talent flows for the whole market. When accounts of this size shift, every holding company adjusts how it prices, staffs, and prioritises other clients. You feel those shifts in your own negotiations even if your roster does not change.
Not always. A single partner gives you clarity, speed, and leverage, but concentrates risk. A split model, like Coca-Cola now has, offers more optionality but increases governance complexity. The right answer depends on your disruption tolerance and how strong your current partners actually are.
Follow the talent. Ask which senior people are moving onto or off your business, how delivery teams are being reorganized, and whether service levels are being adjusted. Major wins and losses rarely leave surrounding accounts untouched, no matter how often you hear the word ring fenced.
The jeopardy is high if you treat it as a routine procurement exercise. A well structured pitch can reset capability and governance. A poorly defined one will simply burn time, damage incumbents who might still be your best option, and deliver a short term fee cut instead of long term advantage.
In most cases, yes. Dentsu, Havas, Stagwell, and Horizon are all capable of competing at the top table and bring different cultures and models. Including at least one of them often sharpens the thinking of the bigger groups and reveals options you might not see in a classic three way race.
Treat it as a transformation led option rather than a straightforward media agency swap. Its refusal to rely on opaque arbitrage models is attractive, but its fee structures and engagement models will feel different. It suits advertisers that want media deeply embedded in wider business change.
It shows that some of the most sophisticated advertisers are willing to move huge accounts without a traditional pitch when they see a model that fits. It also underlines how central data, AI, and connected identity have become in deciding who runs global media.
Go in with a clear mandate and a sharp brief. Define the three to five structural changes you need, from transparency to talent seniority, and link them to precise commercial asks. If you cannot do that, you are not ready to renegotiate and should invest time in diagnosis first.
Ask how these market moves affect their group strategy, where your account sits in their global priority list, and what they would change on your business if you gave them a blank sheet. You are looking for candor, not spin.
Bring an advisor in when you need an unvarnished view of your options, not just help running a process. The brands we work with often call us months before a formal decision, simply to test scenarios and understand the jeopardy attached to each route.
Tom Denford: So welcome back to MediaSnack Live. Coca-Cola are in the news again. They have split their global media account between Omnicom, WPP, and Dentsu, after being forced into a bit of a U turn by PepsiCo’s recent wholesale shift to Publicis.
It is agency musical chairs once again, but the real question is how long this arrangement will actually last. We have some thoughts on that. Meanwhile, the Red Ocean agencies are evolving fast. We are going to look at what is happening at Accenture, Stagwell, and Havas, and at some historic leadership changes at advertiser trade associations. A new generation of advertiser advocacy is on its way.
Live from New York and live from London, it is MediaSnack Live.
Tom Denford: Hello, I am Tom Denford in New York.
David Indo: And I am David Indo from London. Welcome to MediaSnack Live. It is our weekly roundup of the important news, stories, and trends you need to know about the global media and marketing industry.
In every show we ask three questions. What is going on? What are the implications for advertisers? And what should marketers be thinking about next?
Tom Denford: Thanks for joining us. Let us get into this week’s show.
We are reverting back to our true MediaSnack Live format after a few weeks focused on MediaPalooza. There has been a lot of breaking news to keep up with. Every Thursday something big seems to drop and we are here for you when it does.
Let us get into the first story.
Coca-Cola. We have done a couple of episodes about the Coke and Pepsi situation recently. David, give us the backdrop. What is going on and what is the latest?
David Indo: The cola wars inside the agency industry have kept us very busy and very interested.
Yesterday we saw what may be the final piece of the jigsaw, at least for now. It was announced that Coca-Cola have awarded their North American media account to Omnicom.
Let me step back and give some context.
In the spring, Coca-Cola put their global media business up for review and asked their two big incumbents, Publicis and WPP, to tender for the global account.
At the end of the summer, PepsiCo decided to award their entire global media business to Publicis and moved away from Omnicom Media Group, ending a relationship of more than 25 years.
Tom Denford: They just got up and walked.
David Indo: Right. Publicis then had to withdraw from the Coca-Cola contest, leaving WPP as the only group still in contention.
Coca-Cola did not award WPP the North American business. Instead they extended the invitation to other holding companies, most notably Dentsu and Omnicom.
Tom Denford: And WPP said they were not going to participate.
David Indo: Exactly. WPP, perhaps a little upset that they were not simply being gifted the North American business, decided to withdraw themselves from that process.
That left Coca-Cola with a new pitch between Dentsu and Omnicom, who were not in the frame at the beginning.
The situation has now resolved like this. WPP retain the Coca-Cola business in the rest of the world. Dentsu looks after Coca-Cola in South Korea and Japan, two key markets where they were already the incumbent. Omnicom is now agency of record for Coca-Cola in North America.
Six months ago Omnicom looked after PepsiCo globally, including North America, which is its biggest market.
So in summary, PepsiCo has awarded its business to Publicis globally. Coca-Cola are now working with Omnicom in North America, with Dentsu in Japan and South Korea, and with WPP in the rest of the world.
Tom Denford: It has been musical chairs. Let us think about some quick implications and then, as usual, we will come back to what marketers should be thinking.
Sometimes we do not give ourselves much credit, but those who have followed #MediaSnack for a while know that we are usually directionally correct. We tend to understand what is going on behind the scenes.
We actually said that if you were Coca-Cola you would be crazy not to award the North American business to Omnicom. Of course they went through a competitive process, but it always felt inevitable.
You have all this legacy talent at Omnicom that has just been freed up from the PepsiCo business. Omnicom are now the biggest media agency proposition on the planet. Coca-Cola see themselves as the category leader. They were always going to try to spin this as a perfect match.
Coca-Cola can insinuate that PepsiCo could not get full value from what Omnicom had to offer and had to go elsewhere, so they will frame this as a win. For Omnicom it is a huge win. They lost one of their most prestigious clients and ended up with a like for like replacement in the same category.
In North America, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo spend roughly similar amounts on media, so from a billings perspective it is a neat swap.
Dentsu went through the process focused on protecting its existing Japanese and Korean holdings. But the bigger implication is a little embarrassing for Coca-Cola. Their hand was forced. They were outmanoeuvred by PepsiCo, as we have discussed in previous episodes.
The trickiest part is not saving face. It is the commercial implication. Coca-Cola set out to run a pitch on hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholders’ money with two aggressive competitors, Publicis and WPP, fighting hard over the prize. That perfect leverage disappeared when both walked away.
Coca-Cola were left with few options, inviting Omnicom, which needed the business but is now the biggest player in town, and Dentsu, which knew it was unlikely to beat Omnicom in North America.
It is hard to imagine Coca-Cola enjoying much negotiating leverage in that scenario. Our hypothesis is that the North American terms are not as strong as they might have been in the original two way contest.
David Indo: I look at it slightly differently. What you have in Omnicom and Coca-Cola are two businesses that will be smarting for a while from the shock, and maybe the humiliation, of having their partners turn their backs on them.
They have now found each other. I would imagine that John Wren or whoever led the discussion at Omnicom will have said to Coca-Cola something very clear.
"We will not rest until we do a number on Pepsi. We will not rest until we help you beat the PepsiCo and Publicis combination. You now have the resources of the biggest holding company in the world focused on the blue side of the fence. Let us win together."
With Coca-Cola’s scale and marketing knowhow and Omnicom’s scale, ingenuity, talent, and technology, both sides have a lot of motivation to prove a point in the marketplace.
I love that dynamic. It will focus minds and create energy.
The other angle is that Coca-Cola went into this process looking for a consolidated global solution. At the time they had three solutions, but the intent was a global consolidation play.
They come out of it still fragmented, while PepsiCo has one global solution with Publicis. In this market, that level of consistency and scale at a global level is powerful.
Tom Denford: It will create some amazing work. You have two category rivals who truly obsess about each other. Coke and Pepsi never share agencies. They are the classic example of deep category conflict.
That level of rivalry is a powerful motivator. Both sides, and all of their agencies, now have something to prove.
We think this story will not be over quickly. Whoever negotiated the Omnicom deal will almost certainly have pushed for some guarantees around getting a shot at the rest of the global business within a couple of years.
From Coca-Cola’s perspective, there is a decent chance this structure is just a stepping stone to a further reshuffle. That means another round of disruption for Coca-Cola marketers down the line.
So what should other marketers actually take from this?
David Indo: The good news is that the landscape has at least settled. We now know where the players are.
If I am an Omnicom client that is not Coca-Cola, I am thinking hard about the talent on my business and the value I am getting. I want to be sure I am getting my fair share of Omnicom brilliance and not losing senior people to Coca-Cola.
If I am a Publicis client, I am conscious of the huge onboarding task of bringing in the PepsiCo business. I do not want that to distract from my own priorities.
If I am a North American advertiser about to tender my media business, I know WPP has a revenue gap to fill. That shapes how I think about my own leverage.
The one for me is Dentsu. As we discussed in previous episodes, Dentsu is having a bit of a renaissance. The Netflix win in EMEA and the retention of Heineken are important proof points.
They had a real shot at Coca-Cola and will be bruised not to have taken it over the line, but it proves they can compete at the very top table. They are hungry for new business.
If I were tendering my business, I would not dismiss Dentsu. They are match fit.
Tom Denford: And you should not interpret Dentsu missing out on Coca-Cola North America as a sign of weakness. It was very intense batting practice.
It is good as a CEO to be able to show your teams that you are on the list and in contention for these huge briefs. That energy filters through the organisation.
All of which brings us neatly to our second big story.
Tom Denford: We have historically looked at the media agency landscape and split it into a few clear tiers. At the top you now have three giants. Publicis, WPP, and Omnicom are significantly bigger than anyone else in both billings and geography. They are getting bigger because they keep consolidating and merging.
The next four are what we call the Red Ocean agencies. Havas, Horizon, Dentsu, and Stagwell. These are shark infested waters. These groups have to decide how much they want to take on the big three and how much they compete with each other.
We expect alliances, partnerships, acquisitions, mergers, and maybe a bit of destruction between these four.
Looming over this red ocean is Accenture. Accenture has always been on the sidelines of media buying and is now edging further into the water.
A couple of things are interesting. First, Accenture has moved Melissa Fine, who led media for Accenture Song in Australia and New Zealand, into a United States role as managing director of media.
Australia was where Accenture had been experimenting most visibly with agency style media services. Moving that leadership to the US is a strong signal that they intend to scale those services.
Accenture has been clear that it does not want to play the same arbitrage game as the big media groups. It does not need to build margins via inventory commitments. Media is a tiny part of Accenture’s total revenues, so it can afford to treat media as a strategic glue that helps keep brands inside the broader Accenture ecosystem.
Second, Stagwell has rebranded its media assets as Stagwell Media, following the same pattern as Publicis Media, Omnicom Media, and WPP Media.
Stagwell is stepping into some forms of principal based buying, claiming to do it differently, and has a new US chief executive in Liz Rutkerson. Mark Penn, Stagwell’s CEO, has said publicly that he wants Stagwell to be seen as the fourth network, the best alternative in the Red Ocean.
Third, Havas is a very capable Red Ocean agency, not least because its colours are literally red. Culturally, it feels more integrated and creative led than some of its peers. Its partnership with Horizon, announced a year ago, looks complementary in geography and capability.
All four Red Ocean agencies are under serious leadership and are trying to differentiate, not just survive. That is positive for advertisers because it increases real choice.
David Indo: For me, this is all about choice. The market does not need more concentration.
Accenture Song coming into the market with a media offer is a good thing. I am curious about their commercial model. Transparency was their big selling point the last time they tried this. The consequence was that their fees were sky high and the market was not ready to pay for that. They will need to find a better balance this time.
Stagwell going to market as a unified solution is also good. Advertisers want cultural and operational consistency.
And while other holding companies are sunsetting agency brands and talking only about group media, Dentsu has actually rebranded Carat and given it a clear proposition. That may prove a useful point of difference.
Tom Denford: I have always been a bit sceptical about agency brands. In a world where holding company structure and buying power dominate, the group logo often matters more.
That said, I agree that groups like Dentsu and Havas, which can demonstrate a distinct culture and humanity, will be competitive in a landscape otherwise dominated by tech jargon and scale claims.
Tom Denford: Before we finish, a quick word on trade bodies.
At the ANA Masters of Marketing, there were big tributes to Bob Liodice, the outgoing chief executive of the ANA. He has overhauled and transformed that organisation into what many see as the most influential advertiser trade body on the planet.
He is stepping down at the end of the year.
At the same time, Stephan Loerke, chief executive of the World Federation of Advertisers, has said he is stepping down. So within a year, two of the most powerful advertiser associations in the world will have new leadership.
Media will be central to their agendas. These are exciting times for the industry.
David and I were, jokingly, asked whether we would step in. We are busy.
David Indo: My favourite initiative of all time from the WFA is still Project Spring under Stephen Scoular. Big shoes to fill on both sides of the Atlantic.
Tom Denford: That is all for this week. Subscribe if you have not already. We do this every week, looking at two or three big stories and telling you what you need to know to survive and thrive in the global media and advertising market.
Thanks for watching MediaSnack Live. If you found it helpful and want to learn more, head to idcomms.com to get more tips, tools, and resources to help you get good at media. We will see you next week.