Publicis Global CSO Carla Serrano Explains How Convergence Will Play Out in the Ad Industry in 2022

Agency reviews in 2021 pointed to one very clear trend: Many big brands desire a simplification of their agency partners and will trade in specialty shops or local partners in order to gain the scale and efficiency of a single holding company partner. Across Adweek's look at the biggest account changes last year, numerous reviews resulted in consolidations like WPP landing most of the Coca-Cola account and Omnicom snagging Home Depot, Philips and Mercedes Benz. Publicis also saw a number of partners expand relationships with the holding company, including McDonald's, which named Starcom its U.S. media agency of record on top of previous relationships with Epsilon and Sapient. Walmart, Stellantis and Planet Fitness also consolidated some, if not all, of their marketing within Publicis. This trend is something Publicis Groupe began preparing for years ago, Carla Serrano, Publicis global chief strategy officer and CEO of Publicis New York told Adweek, pointing to the agency's Power of One strategy it implemented eight years ago. "Our bet is you have to come in with a lot of different capabilities to be able to really deliver a consolidated offering." Serrano said Publicis' pitches its biggest point of differentiation among its fellow holding companies as its investment in data and engineering. She said Publicis believes clients must own their data to be successful in this new era of consumer privacy, which plays into the hands of its data arm Epsilon. The holding company's investment in engineers comes as brands constantly need new tech solutions, so Serrano said Publicis can fulfill clients' needs in both marketing and tech. Serrano spoke with Adweek about how convergence will continue to play out across the industry in 2022. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Our big theme for Adweek in 2022 is convergence and how it will play out across advertising, media and marketing. So in the agency world, what does convergence look like right now?It's the most popular solution for any clients. People are looking for efficiency as the world has become so much more complex. So they need an expert in integration. All of our clients are trying to integrate within themselves, right? The silos that they once had are artificial and end up being barriers. The solutions need to converge. We don't know any clients that aren't looking for a convergent, more effective and more efficient solution for their business challenges. Is efficiency near the top of the list of clients' needs? Does this point to clients wanting to consolidate in a holding company or are they still willing to say, "Hey, Publicis can do this, WPP can do that, Omnicom can have this part of my business and an indie agency can tackle this?"We see both models. Clients are still looking for the best partner in that broad skill set. Whether it's media or creative, sometimes they want to put the two together. Whether clients want to work with different partners, a lot has to do with how much a client wants ease. Consolidating puts more of the onus on the agency. A client needs to be well structured to be able to handle a number of different partners. For others, they're really looking for a more seamless relationship with one or two key partners. Three Ways Publicis Is Adapting to Client Needs• It created Publicis Le Truc, which provides a central leadership hub for the network's creative offerings. It has approximately 40 employees that build teams across its many creative agencies to help service clients who have consolidated with Publicis. • Marcel, its AI platform, curates teams from Publicis' 80,000 employees within 48 hours to service accounts when new needs arise. • Participation in training labs on Marcel has skyrocketed as employees seek out new skills to make up for any training they have missed out on via natural learning opportunities that occur in the office. In 2021, employees enrolled in 1.3 million training opportunities. We saw a number of large brands like Coke, Mercedes, Home Depot and Philips go the route of working with a single holding company following their reviews. Is that a trend that you've seen across the board?It's definitely a trend that's here to stay. Planet Fitness is one of the ones that consolidated with us this year. I think they were working with like 70 different agencies locally. When you think about Mondelez before, it was the same thing. Same with Coke. What they were looking at before was an incredible amount of agency partnerships. What are the biggest challenges that arise when a large brand consolidates entirely within a holding company?Given the Great Resignation, talent resourcing is very difficult right now for all of us. You don't have hundreds of people hanging around waiting for the big consolidation. Getting up to speed is the big challenge when you win a piece of consolidated business. The good news is most clients understand that and we do have a staggered approach to resourcing. We've been at this a lot longer than others because we really started Power of One about eight years ago under Maurice and we have an operating system. I came from WPP where I worked on One Ford. I worked on the Samsung One team. There was no "One" in that. You left a room and it was definitely frenemy status. And Martin [Sorrell] liked it. Martin actually liked multiple horses in the race. That's how he thought about one and that's not going to fly anymore. Clients really do want you to be working together. The 10 Biggest Creative and Media Account Changes of 2021