John Wren: 'This Is The Fastest We’ve Experienced Change In Our Industry'

There are few people better placed than veteran ad executive John Wren to judge the scale of change now bearing down on marketing.

After decades at the top of Omnicom, he has led the group through economic cycles, technological shifts, and more than one reinvention of the agency model. But even Wren sounds struck by the pace of the current moment.

Speaking ahead of Cannes Lions, he says the most significant shift of the past year is not simply the wider adoption of generative AI, but the emergence of agentic AI: systems that do not just respond to prompts, but reason, act and orchestrate workflows with increasing autonomy.

It is a shift, he argues, that changes not only how agencies work, but how clients need to organise for growth. That matters because Wren is no longer just talking about Omnicom as a holding company of agencies. Following the acquisition of Interpublic, he is making the case for a newly enlarged business built around creativity, intelligence, technology and data infrastructure — from Omni and Acxiom to Flywheel, and Credera.

The promise is seductive: deeper creative firepower, richer identity and purchase data, and AI-enabled systems that can help clients move faster across strategy, media, commerce and customer engagement. The challenge, of course, is proving that such scale can deliver sharper, more distinctive work rather than simply more complexity. Wren is alive to that tension.

As Cannes prepares to celebrate the industry’s best work, he argues that breakthrough creativity becomes more valuable, not less, in a market being flooded with AI-generated content. The brands that win will not be those that simply automate more, but those that can still break through what he calls the AI “sea of sameness”.

What would you say have been the most significant shift for marketers in the last 12 months?

The most significant shift in the last 12 months has been the move to agentic AI.

In recent years, generative AI promised productivity gains, but it largely remained a tool: you input a prompt, wait for an output, then decide what to do with it. That's changed a lot this year. Now we're seeing the use of orchestrated intelligence, where AI agents work together, reason through problems, and continuously drive decisions and actions autonomously.

As part of that innovation, we introduced a new generation of Omni earlier this year that has semiautonomous multi-agent reasoning workflows. This shift to agentic AI is significant because now teams are no longer constrained by the speed of manual processes. They can focus on strategy and creativity while agents amplify their work — a blend of human and machine that delivers smarter decisions, faster execution, and better business outcomes.

With the ongoing adoption of AI - How have conversations around creativity and brand building changed this last year?

When technology gives everyone access to more tools, more content and more automation, breakthrough creativity becomes even more important.

The question clients are now asking is: How do we break through the noise? The answer is twofold: you need breakthrough creative ideas and the ability to deliver them to the right people, at the right time, in the right context.

When it comes to breakthrough creativity, that's our bread and butter. The new Omnicom offers clients the deepest bench of creative talent in the industry, and that talent will help brands break through the AI ‘sea of sameness.’

But great creative alone isn't enough. You also need an elite dataset to power personalization across an increasingly complex media ecosystem. With the addition of Acxiom, we've been able to integrate Real ID — the world's most comprehensive consumer identity graph — into Omni, where it works in concert with Flywheel's purchase data and our proprietary cultural and behavioural intelligence. This data foundation allows us to help clients deploy marketing capital more effectively and drive better outcomes.

How are you preparing and supporting clients around the impact agentic AI?

We are partnering with several clients on their AI transformation journey. AI isn't another tool to bolt onto your existing tech and data stack. It's a new operating model that requires internal transformation. If you have fragmented data and outdated technology, you won’t be able to fully realise the opportunities agentic AI poses.

That's where we come in. We've been investing in data, technology, and AI capabilities for years. Through Credera, we're building the enterprise infrastructure and operating model for agentic AI. Through Acxiom, we're powering identity and data collaboration. Through Omni, we're enabling agent creation, activation and orchestration at scale. Together, these capabilities unlock connected intelligence across strategy, media, commerce, and customer engagement. We're not just supporting clients through this transformation—we're architecting the infrastructure that enables it.

How do you try to prepare to lead when geopolitically things are absolutely nuts from one week to the next? Do you have a way of readying to react?

I've been in this role long enough to have seen multiple economic cycles, geopolitical shifts, and market disruptions. I take pride in the fact that we've delivered through these down cycles before.

We stay ahead by continuously monitoring the macro environment and being prepared to adapt quickly. We can't control what happens in the world, but we can control how we respond to it. We focus relentlessly on the levers we can pull, such as how we're structured, how we invest in our people, how we manage our costs, and ultimately how we serve our clients. That's where our energy goes.

Which one campaign from your business are you most proud of from the last 12 months and what does it say about the business offer?

That’s like asking me to pick a favourite child.

Over the past year, we’ve seen exceptional, award-winning work across our agencies, and I hope to see a lot of it recognised at Cannes later this month.

But what excites me most isn’t one campaign — it’s the pattern. The best work today sits at the intersection of creativity, intelligence and technology. Those can’t be separate conversations anymore.

When they come together, ideas become sharper, faster, more measurable and more scalable. That’s where the industry is going, and it’s where Omnicom is built to lead.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming months and why is it important?

In the six months since closing the acquisition of Interpublic, we've made great strides in integrating our two companies. With so much of that work behind us, our mission now is to show our clients what we can actually do – to execute on the promise of this combined company.

Clients are navigating a completely new consumer engagement model, one increasingly shaped by creators, communities, algorithms, commerce platforms, entertainment ecosystems, and AI-driven discovery — often simultaneously. Within the new Omnicom, we're uniquely positioned to lead them through it. We’re currently focusing on solutions that address this new model: sports and entertainment, social and influencer, agentic commerce and generative search. These are the areas that will define the next era of growth, and we’re eager to help our clients succeed across them all.

What one question would you ask your peer CEOs right now?

Can we all agree this is the fastest we’ve experienced change in our industry?

What would you like to have been if you weren’t doing this job?

Honestly, I’ve been doing this job for so long I can’t picture myself doing anything else. After all these years, I remain curious about the industry’s evolution and eager to be a part of it. Beyond my CEO role though, I hold another very important title that I love, and that’s being a grandpa to my two amazing grandkids.