I see less friction and more agility than before: George Manas of Omnicom

Omnicom's acquisition of IPG was one of the advertising industry's biggest deals, prompting questions about everything from scale and integration to the future of agency networks. While many assumed the merger was simply about creating the world's largest marketing services company, George Manas, Chief Growth & Solutions Officer, Omnicom, believes the bigger story is about unlocking new capabilities, investing more deeply in AI and data, and building a more connected organisation that can better serve clients.

In a conversation with Neeta Nair, Editor, IMPACT Magazine, at Cannes Lions 2026, Manas discusses how Omnicom is preserving the distinct identities of its agency brands while integrating capabilities across the group, the opportunities created by the IPG acquisition, India's growing importance in the network, and why Cannes is increasingly rewarding work that delivers measurable business impact.

Read the excerpts below:

You've been in an agency leadership role as the head of OMD for about half a decade. Now you're in a group leadership role. How are you steering the agency and the network forward?
My role now is to look across our complete set of capabilities and identify opportunities to better integrate our solutions. I'm also looking at new opportunities to develop capabilities that meet our clients' evolving needs and position Omnicom overall ahead of the curve.

As part of the consolidation, you retired three creative agency brands but retained all six media agency brands. Now that they're coming under one umbrella, how do you keep them distinct? Is that even possible?
They have very different strategic points of view. They have different leadership teams and their own individual roster of clients, which means they have bespoke learnings and category-level expertise. There's quite a bit of differentiation in how they strategically service specific client needs. But again, they all sit on the same overall platform, which gives them access to our scale, our specialised capabilities and the Omni platform. So it's the best of both worlds. 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.

What advice would you give Ellen Griffin, your successor at OMD?
Ellen doesn't need advice from me. She's brilliant. When we made the leadership change and brought Ellen into the role, I told her she needed to make it her own. I had a brilliant opportunity to run OMD Worldwide for quite a few years. I took over from Florian Adamski, who now leads the media group overall. He gave me the space to make OMD my own and put my fingerprints on the business. I expect no less from Ellen. She's got all the experience, the smarts and the client skills to knock it out of the park.

With consolidation comes greater scale, but also concerns around friction, fragmentation and slower innovation. How do you manage that?
We've spent the last seven months diligently integrating the resources of IPG and Omnicom. We're very pleased with achieving our key integration milestones, like connecting our capabilities. We've delivered a simpler overall structure to the organisation so that our media teams can better connect with our creative teams, our CRM teams and so on. We've also unified our data and technology architecture under one leadership structure that sits centrally at Omnicom and supports the entirety of the organisation. Overall, we've strengthened our offer.

So yes, we've gained scale, but that scale translates into lots of capability unlock. As the world's largest media buyer, we've been using that scale to unlock innovation and co-develop new capabilities with partners like Amazon, Netflix, Disney and Meta. We've made quite a few announcements to that effect here this week.

I don't necessarily see it as big versus small or fast versus slow. We've built a much stronger organisation by combining the two entities, and we're using our scale to innovate around what matters most to our clients. I actually see less friction than previously. I see more speed and agility than previously. The market we're operating in, particularly around AI, requires investment in new kinds of resources and capabilities. As we've come together as one company, our capacity to invest our time and resources into AI has grown. We're better positioned than ever to advance and progress within AI. Overall, we've been very pleased with the integration and we're now doubling down on the areas that matter most to our clients.

What capabilities from IPG are you most excited about integrating into Omnicom?
Let me tackle that in three parts. First, talent. The quality of leadership and expertise at IPG is outstanding. We couldn't be more pleased to have that talent become part of this combined organisation. Second, Acxiom and Real ID. The strength of the underlying data and identity assets is phenomenal. One of our priorities during the integration was ensuring that we could embed Acxiom and identity across our broader organisation.

Third, because it's top of mind for me, is sports. More and more clients are looking to play and win in a sports and entertainment environment. It's such an important opportunity for them to build deep and meaningful relationships with existing and new consumers. IPG brought unbelievable sports capabilities into Omnicom through Octagon and Momentum across sponsorship, talent management and experiential. As a combined organisation, we're incredibly well positioned to help our clients not just win in sports today, but shape the sports marketplace for the future. We're really excited about that.

Are there any capabilities that are still missing?
We're always looking to stay out ahead. One of the areas we're continuing to double down on is our transformation consultancy practice. We acquired Credera seven or eight years ago and have been building and acquiring around it for some time. We're seeing increased demand from clients looking for a partner that can help modernise their internal infrastructure, data architecture and operating model for agentic capabilities. That's going to continue to be a focus for us as we look to be the most influential growth partner to our clients for this new era.

Omnicom has introduced a centralised client solutions structure, bringing together experts from across agencies. How will that work, especially during pitches?
As part of the new company, we've established an integrated client leadership structure, which ensures that our clients have simplified access to the breadth and depth of talent and capability across the organisation. This isn't necessarily new. It's something we've been practising with some of the world's largest and most complex advertisers. If you look at how we organise around Apple, Nissan, Mercedes or, more recently, Bayer, these are innovative operating models where an integrated client leader serves at an Omnicom level and is accountable for ensuring the best of Omnicom comes forward for that client.

As we enter new business or broader transformation initiatives with existing clients, we're increasingly looking to create that integrated structure around a single client leader. Those are enterprise-level relationships that aren't dependent on a single agency or a single capability area. They're Omnicom-to-enterprise partnerships that deliver significant value to clients while allowing us to integrate more of their marketing ecosystem and drive better results.

How important is the India market to Omnicom today?
I continue to make trips to India because it's such a vibrant and exciting market. It continues to be a high-growth market for us. The combined organisation of Omnicom and IPG has gained significant strength and scale in India, and we're really bullish about the opportunities there to service not just global client needs, but local client needs as well. That's not just me saying that. If you look at our track record, especially over the last seven months since we've been an integrated company, you'll see a mix of both global and local wins in India. I've got high hopes and big ambitions for the market.

Is the focus today more on winning global mandates, or are market-specific opportunities just as important?
We operate a big, robust business. We're as interested in global remits as we are in important local remits. We're structured to service a spectrum of client needs of all shapes and sizes. In some cases, that's capability-specific or market-specific. In other cases, it's multinational and multi-service engagement. We're not having to choose between one or the other. We're a big and robust organisation with the opportunity to do both.

You’re at Cannes Lions 2026. What has your experience been like?
This has been my favourite Cannes Lions so far. What's been noticeable this year is there's a lot less talk about hypotheticals. There's almost a return to real work and real proof of work. That's reflected not just in the panels and programming, but also in the work that's winning. This isn't just great creative work. It's great work that's driving results, whether local, regional or global; brand or performance; B2B or B2C. As I anticipated before Cannes Lions this year, we're continuing to see that the work that wins is, more often than not, the work that demonstrates integration across media, creative, CRM and multiple consumer touchpoints. There's a modernisation of the work that's now setting a new standard for what great marketing—and what winning at Cannes Lions—means.

Do you think that renewed focus on effectiveness is a result of last year's controversies around award entries and the stricter measures introduced this year?
I wouldn't attribute it to that. It has much more to do with the growing connection between marketing and business, and the broader ambition client organisations have to demonstrate marketing's impact on the business. That's certainly been a focus for us at Omnicom. It's not a coincidence that we were once again recognised as the leader in the Global Effie Index. That's a really important accolade because it demonstrates the connection between the work and the business outcome. I expect to see us perform very well at this year's Cannes Lions, particularly in the ‘work that works’ categories.