Omnicom: Legally prohibited from moral leadership

Jun 25, 2025

Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade.

Today: How Omnicom has agreed to leave moral value judgements at the door to get its IPG takeover past Donald Trump.

Sign up for an annual paid membership of Unmade before June 30 and you’ll receive a huge additional benefit - a complimentary membership of Mumbrella Pro, usually priced at $790. It’s our best ever end of financial year offer.

Along with all of our paywalled content, your annual Unmade membership gets you tickets to September’s REmade conference on retail media; to October’s Unlock conference on marketing in the nighttime economy; and to Unmade’s Compass end-of-year roadshow.

And Mumbrella Pro contains an extensive archive of presentations from Mumbrella’s conferences, including last month’s Mumbrella 360, along with the industry’s most detailed database of brand and agency rosters.

Act before the end of the financial year for Unmade + Mumbrella Pro. Upgrade today.

Omnicom’s IPG takeover will change more than we realise

If you enjoy reading densely written legalise, then I have a treat for you.

The Federal Trade Commission in the US has agreed not to block Omnicom’s takeover of Interpublic Group, and the case notes are now online.

We already knew that the deal will significantly change the landscape, creating a new largest communications holding company both in Australia and globally.

But more than that, the Trump-inspired terms of the deal will change how holdcos do business.

To get the deal across the line, the FTC revealed that Omnicom has promised not to do anything that:

“Directs Advertisers’ advertising spend based on the Media Publisher’s political or ideological viewpoints, or the political or ideological viewpoints expressed in content that the Media Publisher sells advertising to run alongside of (other than as required by applicable laws);
”Refuses Advertisers’ requests to direct advertising spend to a Media Publisher based on political or ideological viewpoints or political content (other than as required by applicable laws); or
“Declines to deal with Advertisers based on political or ideological viewpoints of that Advertiser (other than as required by applicable laws)”

The deal comes from the Trump administration’s anti-woke playbook. In other words, it will now be illegal for Omnicom staff to recommend to their clients to steer spend away from sites that have extreme political content. (I’m thinking of the likes of X or Breitbart.)

They will also not be allowed to decline an instruction from a client to spend on a particular site. And they won’t be allowed to decline clients based on company values. That’s how I interpret “political or ideological viewpoints”, anyway.

Rather like Conan O’Brien’s Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television tour after he was sacked from the Tonight Show, Omnicom is now legally prohibited from providing its clients with moral leadership.

One of the dirty secrets of most of the holdcos is that they still have tobacco clients. Omnicom would be able to argue that it would be illegal to turn the business away. Ditto fossil fuels, alcohol, betting or any other legal product that exists in a moral grey area.

That will also provide the other holdcos with cover to behave in the same way if they wish.

A second area where this changes the landscape is around brand safety in a way that could be positive for news media.

The momentum, or rather inertia, has been towards media agencies playing it safe when it comes to their clients’ ads running next to bad news. There’s little evidence that a consumer would take offence at a brand’s advertising running next to coverage of Middle East conflict, for instance. Yet agencies exclude whole categories just to eliminate risk.

That’s created one of the many challenges around publishing business models. Brand safety has become a lazy practice rather than a genuine effort at, well, brand safety.

Now the inertia may move away from blocking whole categories unless the decision can be justified, rather than simply a lazy safety first position.

Locally, I can’t wait to see how that plays out when a client spooked by MFW campaigning against The Kyle & Jackie O Show instructs an Omnicom agency not to support ARN Media, for instance.

It’s a win for those who prefer their media planning to have an amoral flavour.

Unmade Index can’t decide where to go

There was no clear direction on the Unmade Index yesterday with the broadcast stocks of Nine, ARN Media and Southern Cross all in decline while Ooh Media, Domain and IVE Group were among the larger stocks to see growth.

Meanwhile Sports Entertainment group, owner of SEN Radio leapt by 13.6% despite no new information on the company being disclosed to the ASX.