NASHVILLE -- Omnicom on Thursday published its 2025 annual report, in
part reflecting its acquisition of Interpublic. You can read all 96 pages by clicking the image at bottom, but a keyword index reveals an emphasis on references to "clients," "media," "advertising,"
"agencies," "AI" and "data," but not so much on "people," or the 120,000 members of its "human" talent pool that powers its organization, services its clients and outputs its media, creative, strategy
and other work.
The report does not actually mention the word "output" at all, which is telling, given a presentation by long-time management consultant and author Michael Farmer, who
presented a preview of his newest book during Thursday's sessions of the Association of National Advertisers media conference here.
The book, "Madison Avenue Revisited," recommends that
agencies -- and holding companies -- reframe their scope of work and renumeration based on tangible outputs.
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It was one of the most audience-engaged sessions during Thursday's sessions, with
audience members -- including at least one client procurement executive -- asking questions probing Farmer's thesis about shifting to output accountability, downplaying role of AI and agentic systems
in their workflow, but also replacing lower-level agency talent with AI tools and training mid- and senior-level executives how to use them more effectively.
Unlike his previous two books,
which focused heavily on agency creative services, Farmer said the new one delves into agency media services in new and revealing ways, and said he would provide the readers of MediaPost with an
excerpt shortly.
Lastly, here's how NotebookLM rendered Omnicom's
2005 annual report as a "mindmap."
