The adlands biggest shift in a decade arrived this week, with Omnicom officially adopting Interpublic and becoming the world’s largest agency group by revenue.
The closure ends Interpublic’s 65-year run as the first major global holding company and sets a new competitive benchmark for scale in 2026, as the market recalibrates around consolidation, cost efficiency and capability.
But at ADMA’s annual End of Year Party, held at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the message was clear: scale isn’t the story, uncertainty, culture and effectiveness are.
For Omnicom Oceania CEO Nick Garrett, his job is no longer to convert a “disjointed jigsaw puzzle into a masterpiece” but to create a culture worth thriving for.
“You can have the best strategy, the most unbelievable architecture, and hire the best technology or systems-integration people, and we all know it’s bulls**t. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. If you don’t get the people right, it doesn’t count for anything,” he told the room.
Garrett said the process of bringing people together is deeply human, especially in an environment shaped by transformation, adding that his cultural priorities come down to three clear measures.
“I think what matters are three things: culture worth belonging to, leaders worth following, and work worth doing. You define it in your world, but if you can’t look at those three measures and be excited to get out of bed, it’s humbling to see how raw and real that becomes.”
Nick Garrett (centre) at ADMA’s End of Year Celebration
Shift from efficiencies to effectiveness
Looking to 2026, Garrett said the industry needs to move on from its obsession with cost-cutting.
“With the lens of optimism, and I’m sincere about this, I reckon the Word Of The Year needs to move from efficiencies to effectiveness.”
He went on to say that efficiency only matters if it fuels the next stage of impact.
“Agencies need to help you, or we need to help each other sell that to executive sponsors. The cost-out equation is important, but it’s in aid of something else. What are you going to do with that money to redesign extraordinary impact?”
Garrett added that the industry has been too defensive for too long, adding that “the marketing industry has been fascinated with control”.
He said marketers hold two unique powers inside organisations: “You’ve got two things no one else has, and when I say ‘you’, I mean ‘us’. Creativity is not communications, it’s ideas, and the white spaces. Ideas that transform customer experience.”
“And brand is a business strategy. If we think brand is a marketing strategy, we’re going to sink further down the pipe. If brand is a business strategy with enterprise impact, then you are the orchestrators of change and transformation, not just the receivers of it.”
Garrett closed the panel with a reminder that marketers already have what they need to lead: “You all know your stuff. No one else in the executive knows that better than you”.