Leading Omnicom Advertising Group’s New Era

Now in its transition stage following last year’s $13.5bn takeover of IPG by Omnicom, the deal has already reshaped the global advertising sector significantly. Not least, it brought together two of the ‘Big Five’ holding companies to create the world’s largest by revenue and led to the merger or closure of several famous agency brands.

With John Wren overseeing the global group, Omnicom Advertising (OA) remains under the leadership of Troy Ruhanen, the affable Australian who serves as both president and CEO. He has spent most of his career within the network, beginning as an account executive at BBDO Brisbane. After a decade across the Leo Burnett network, he returned in 2004 as managing director of BBDO New York, rising through the agency before leading TBWA\Worldwide for ten years and taking on his current role in the autumn of 2024.

Ruhanen has been one of the key figures shaping the global advertising sector over the past two decades. He is now responsible for guiding the future of the creative agencies under his remit including McCann, BBDO, TBWA, Lucky Generals, Martin, Deutsch, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, GSD&M and Grabarz.

People, creativity and problems

Reflecting on the drivers behind his 30‑year career, Ruhanen highlights three constants: his love of the people, his commitment to his teams, and his enduring excitement for creativity and problem‑solving.

“Invariably a problem is an opportunity,” he says. “Clients often come to us with a difficult problem they cannot or are trying to solve. That’s an amazing opportunity for the curious; to reshape, reimagine.” He also stresses the importance of acknowledging stress and having people around you who can help you navigate difficult chapters.

He is not blind to the hardship caused by the merger, which targeted over $1bn in cost savings with more still to come. While the strategy aimed to reduce duplication, technology adoption has also played a major role. Ruhanen sees this as an opportunity for remaining staff to be “redirected into a different path” as the new Omnicom takes shape.

“Our hope is that they get redirected into a much more strategic, more creative, and more dynamic path in our industry… we’re already seeing that with the wins that we’re getting, which turns into positive growth.”

A House of Brands

Omnicom continues to stand by its ‘House of Brands’ strategy, retaining most agency identities rather than consolidating them under a single company banner. Ruhanen argues that this approach differentiates the group from rivals such as Publicis, WPP and Accenture Song.

Ruhanen sees Omnicom’s commitment to its brands as offering a consolidated strength while its difference from the Publicis Groupe ‘Power of One’ model, he says, is a positive development for the industry, giving clients a wider variety of choice.

“Let's not forget, there are millions of clients out there. There's plenty for all. It's just a matter of us concentrating on being our best selves, and I believe we're doing that,” he says optimistically about the different operating methods which exist both in other companies as within Omnicom.

“At the end of the day for Omnicom the future is bright,” he adds. “We've got clarity around the brands… If you look at the last 18 months of this deal, we've done an amazing job with stability.”

He believes this approach offers clients greater choice and allows Omnicom to tailor solutions across micro‑networks, boutiques and client‑specific agencies. The group services around 6,500 clients and manages two‑thirds of the world’s top 100 brands, giving it deep insight into what drives effectiveness.

“When you look at that, we have an understanding of what drives great. We're able to leverage that for these clients and give them an insight and an advantage over everybody else with how all that work and effectiveness powers the AI evaluation tools that we have, on being able to really measure distinctiveness, and being able to look at powerful insights or trends, and what velocity they are moving at,” says Ruhanen.

That scale feeds directly into Omnicom’s AI‑powered tools, enabling the group to measure distinctiveness, identify trends and evaluate creative performance. The integration of digital commerce and retail business Flywheel with customer data business Acxiom further strengthens its data‑driven marketing and personalisation capabilities. This feeds into Omni, the group’s internal AI operating system. Ensuring teams adapt quickly to the platform is now a global priority.

Remaining human

Despite the rapid rise of AI across advertising and the wider business world, Ruhanen is adamant about preserving human judgement — the layer that interprets the questions machines raise and uses them as fuel to push the work further. At the same time, he recognises that efficiency will always matter in a publicly listed company, and that balance sheets have to be maintained too.

Omnicom’s AI tools are being used as creative stimulus — helping teams gather feedback, spark ideas and support production. While some tasks are now handled by machines, he sees AI primarily as a way to help people better meet clients’ needs, especially as the industry shifts towards performance‑based compensation. It’s a change that’s prompting clients to value work less by time and execution, and more by the outcomes it delivers.

“We have tools that allow our people to be able to use their judgment to ask those questions, to get us to a new place, to ask another question, to go again. There's always the human partner with this,” he believes.

On the widescale adoption of AI across the business, he is ensuring his own awareness and knowledge of Omnicom’s systems while expecting his teams to upskill too. 

“I’m trying to be consistently clear to educate them on the tools and see what is possible. Every day, as I go through Omni - the platform that we've been developing over a number of years here now - I see the momentum in it. Especially with its newest inputs. It's a matter of making sure that we communicate that to people so that they understand what's available and what's coming on the horizon and keep them excited about the possibilities of what they could become in reaching their own potential.”

In terms of his own role, he describes it as “a job of communication” in order that his teams understand the expectations they face and know what success looks like. He also admits to being surprised at how consistent he finds the advertising industry in its own negativity. 

“I've never seen an industry that wants to tear itself down more than advertising. It's quite astonishing, and yet, I think about the careers that we've saved on the client side, or the factories that we've built, or whatever else. I mean, we have an amazing impact on the world, and I'd like us to be a little bit more focused on the positives and the good that we're creating. Part of our jobs as leaders is to create belief. We can educate and shine a light on and then motivate. That's really what the task is right now, as we try to get away from those who are trying to tear it down, and have done, frankly, since Wired Magazine wrote about the death of advertising in 1994. It's been an ongoing topic for 32 years.”

The humanity of his role was challenged during the decision-making process around the merger; amalgamating agencies and deciding on the futures of thousands of people who would be retained, transition to another agency, or leave. 

The heartache caused by many of those decisions is far from lost on him. 

“We wanted to be very clear about the identity that they were to adopt and the people that they were going to work for. So that made it difficult, because there were some really talented people that we had to say ‘goodbye’ to and you can't ever lose sight of that - it was hard,” he admits.

It has also proven challenging for his team who recognised the impact on a lot of people and wanted to act “sensitively” and “graciously” during that period. 

“I felt very good about our culture, about the people that work with me and how they operate — we were always focused on doing it in the best possible way that we could. Now it’s about reshaping our businesses and resources and directing the payroll into creativity and strategy so that we can be the critical partner we need to be for the future.”