There is a certain kind of chief executive who grants interviews only when he has something specific he would like you to know. John Wren, who has led Omnicom for more than two decades and who can be, as they say, selective in his availability to reporters, apparently had such a moment last week.
Mr. Wren's message, delivered over what Campaign described as a morning smoothie, was that the turbulence following Omnicom's acquisition of the Interpublic Group of Companies is "substantially done." The new Omnicom, he said, "has arrived and is operating." The company reported organic revenue growth of 7.2 percent in the third quarter, up from 6.1 percent in the previous period.
The integration of two holding companies of this scale — Omnicom is now the largest in the industry by revenue — inevitably involves what corporate communications departments prefer to call "dispositions" and "headcount reductions." Mr. Wren was at pains to clarify that much of this unpleasantness is behind the company, pushing back against what he characterized as misreporting that suggested 15,000 job cuts were still to come. "Our headcount reductions have really been in place for a lifetime since the end of the first quarter," he said.
(One is left to wonder what the employees who departed during that lifetime might call it.)
On the matter of talent departures, Mr. Wren offered a philosophical view. "Everybody's replaceable," he said, adding that no individual, starting with himself, is critical to the mission. Those who left, he suggested, simply chose to "get off the train."
Asked about competition with Publicis Groupe, the French holding company that has been trading places with Omnicom atop various industry rankings, Mr. Wren was magnanimous in that particular way that suggests he is not. "We have a lot of respect for what they've been able to accomplish," he said. "But we know that we're better than they are."
The smoothie, presumably, was finished by then.
Original story published in campaignlive.com: "John Wren calls the headwinds caused by Omnicom-IPG merger ‘substantially done’ ahead of Q3 earnings call | Campaign US"