Agency Business

Tyler Turnbull, global CEO of FCB, joins co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser to talk about what it means to run a global creative network today—and why he’s betting on premium creativity, flexible local leadership, and a new approach to audience planning.

Tyler traces his own journey from intern to global CEO, shares how FCB evolved after the DraftFCB merger, and explains why the network empowers its office-level CEOs with operational independence while still supporting global brand clients. He also discusses how the agency integrates strategic media planning earlier in the creative process, and how it’s approaching AI: not just for cost savings, but for expanding creativity and driving business transformation.

Plus, Olivia, Brian, and Tyler discuss:

• The future of holding company brands
• Interpublic’s approach to internal competition between FCB and McCann
• How political polarization is reshaping brand sentiment, media investment, and the stakes of creative missteps
• And what Tyler looks for when hiring new CEOs to lead regional agency operations

Stick around for our news of the week, including discussion of leadership changes at WPP and Dentsu, and the implications of potential political conditions on an IPG-Omnicom merger.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

This week’s episode of Agency Business is a little different—our scheduled guest couldn’t make it, so co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser go deep on the biggest news of the week. From sudden account moves to growing competition from consulting firms, we explore what it all means for agencies navigating a rapidly evolving landscape.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

Jill Kelly, North America CEO of Assembly, joins co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser to discuss her first few months leading the Stagwell media agency—and how she’s thinking about pricing models, technology, and talent in an increasingly complex media ecosystem.

Jill shares her unconventional path to executive leadership, which spans media buying, corporate communications, and group-level leadership roles across several major holding companies. She reflects on how the practice of media has evolved—from basic reach and frequency toward nuanced brand performance KPIs—and why Assembly is leaning into both agility and simplification to meet marketers’ changing needs.

She also explains how her team is approaching AI implementation, platform strategy, and compensation innovation—including her take on why Assembly’s size and client mix allow it to experiment with alternative pricing structures.

Plus, Olivia, Brian, and Jill discuss:

• The new WPP Media—and the retirement of the GroupM name
• Accenture Song’s next chapter as David Droga steps down
• Johnny Hornby’s expanded role at WPP

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

Talia Arnold, managing director and co-founder of Exverus Media, joins co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser to discuss how the Los Angeles-based agency has scaled without shortcuts—maintaining a lean team, independent ethos, and focus on solving complex marketing problems with creativity and tech-enabled insight.

Talia shares her nontraditional path into media, why she believes “anyone can start an agency, but not everyone is a chef,” and how Exverus grew from an attic startup into an award-winning agency serving Fortune 500 brands and fast-scaling CPG and streaming clients.

She also explains how Exverus manages to punch above its weight, how the team thinks about outsourcing and automation, and what makes their hiring philosophy different from the standard risk-averse approach.

Plus, Olivia, Brian, and Talia discuss:

• IPG Mediabrands moving talent offshore amid broader restructuring
• Publicis’ latest acquisition in the influencer space, Captiv8
• Ongoing leadership turnover at Gale.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

Sean Corcoran, president of MissionOne Media and longtime agency leader, joins co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser to discuss the launch of MissionOne within the growing “big indie” platform BarkleyOKRP—and what it takes to build a media brand inside a full-service agency structure.

Sean walks through his career path, from political work and affiliate marketing to stints as a Forrester analyst and co-founder of Mediahub. He explains how his experience defining media categories and evaluating agencies from the outside shaped his approach to building challenger shops on the inside.

At MissionOne, he’s aiming to blend the tech-forward strengths of acquisition Adlucent with a human-first, creative-led philosophy. He also unpacks how integrated P&L models help avoid internal competition, what it’s really like working with private equity backers like Keystone, and why the “murky middle” is the most dangerous place for agencies to be.

Plus, Olivia, Brian, and Sean discuss:

• Omnicom CEO John Wren’s $1 salary contract extension through 2028.
• Keurig Dr Pepper’s decision to disband its in-house agency, Liquid Sunshine.
• Dentsu’s ongoing struggles in the U.S. market.
• Globant’s surprising earnings guidance downgrade.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

Reid Carr, CEO and executive creative director of Red Door Interactive joins this week's episode of Agency Business.

In a wide-ranging interview, Reid shares the history of his agency, its focus on integrated services and the choices he has made as the business has grown.

Plus, Brian and Reid discuss:

• S4 Capital and Stagwell's diverging Q1 2025 results
• Layoffs at GroupM (or WPP Media Services) and of Dentsu’s latest Americas CEO, too
• 4As new CEO appointment.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

Jared Belsky, CEO and co-founder of Acadia, joins co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser to talk about building a mid-market agency at scale and why he’s become one of the industry’s most vocal critics of principal-based media buying.

Jared shares what led him to co-found Acadia after leading 360i, and why the firm has centered its business model around operational efficiency, cultural values, and a diversified client base. He explains why Acadia has no VPs, how it’s maintained 9% unwanted turnover, and why staying private has helped the agency say no to misaligned opportunities — including a $150 million account.

He also breaks down why principal-based media buying is, in his view, a “reprehensible” practice that undermines client trust and how opacity around these deals is enabling broader normalization of rebates, fraud, and poor media outcomes.

Plus, Olivia, Brian, and Jared discuss:

• Publicis’ disclosed 21% 2024 employee churn and what that signals about the talent market
• The holding company’s acquisition of sports marketing agency Adopt and where it fits within Publicis Connected Media
• ANA’s latest findings on AOR tenure, and whether the real takeaway is that fewer clients are signing AORs to begin with.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

José Villa, founder and president of Sensis, joins co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser to talk about what it takes to build and scale an independent cross-cultural agency, and what the future of multicultural marketing looks like in today's shifting business and political climate.

José shares the origin story behind Sensis, how the agency evolved from a digital-first shop building Spanish-language websites into a full-service cross-cultural advertising firm, and why research and strategy have been central to its growth. He explains how Sensis structures its offerings across media, creative, research and earned media, and how the agency navigates pricing, bundling, and staffing challenges as a 150-person independent shop.

He also discusses how the broader pullback on DEI rhetoric is impacting multicultural marketing investment, why brands are being more cautious about language but not cutting multicultural spending, and what it really takes to build a workforce equipped to meet today’s cross-cultural market demands.

Plus, Olivia, Brian, and José discuss:

• IPG’s Q1 results and whether large account losses should be viewed as isolated or systemic
• WPP’s Q1 results and broader macroeconomic headwinds
• WPP resigning PayPal’s media account.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

Nicole Estebanell, U.S. CEO of Mediahub, joins co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser to talk about what it means to lead a challenger agency inside one of the world’s largest media networks.

Nicole walks through her career journey, beginning with her early media roles at Digitas and Neo to later leading the Nike account at Mindshare, serving as global chief client officer at Initiative, and now taking the reins in the U.S. for Mediahub. She reflects on the client and agency-side experiences that shaped her commercial instincts, what it means to build integrated teams today, and how to preserve Mediahub’s challenger DNA even as it scales.

She also shares how Mediahub is positioned within IPG’s Mediabrands group, how the agency evaluates inbound RFPs, and why clients increasingly ask their media agencies to solve for more than media.

Plus, Olivia and Brian discuss: 

• Publicis Groupe’s strong Q1 earnings, and why it’s outpacing peers on growth
• Omnicom’s more modest Q1 results and how principal media trading is shaping holding company margins
• Omnicom scaling its influencer marketing under the Creo brand name.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work — plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia's Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

This episode is sponsored by Ebiquity.

Picture this: complete confidence that every dollar of your media budget is working as hard as possible.

That's what Ebiquity delivers. They are the world's leading media investment analysts, helping global brands turn media complexity into competitive advantage. Through independent, data-driven analysis, they identify inefficiencies, create transparency, and unlock hidden value in your media investments.

Over 80 of the world's largest advertisers trust Ebiquity for a reason. Visit ebiquity.com today and discover how they can help your brand.

Jon Cook, CEO of VML, joins co-hosts Olivia Morley and Brian Wieser to talk about the agency’s evolution and what it means to lead a business that spans both world-class creative and deep enterprise technology.

Jon walks through how VML was formed through a series of mergers — including Wunderman, J. Walter Thompson, and Y&R — and how the newly unified brand operates across creativity, commerce, customer experience and technology. He explains the structure of VML’s Enterprise Solutions group, which makes up roughly 40 percent of the company, and why the agency’s growth often hinges on integrating those capabilities with its creative engine.

The conversation also covers AI investments, DEI policy implementation across markets, and how the agency prepares for geopolitical uncertainty while staying grounded in consistent values.

Plus, Olivia, Brian and Jon discuss:

• Havas earnings and the tone of “normal” in Q1 performance
• The brand power — and business dissonance — of Stagwell’s Sport Beach
• BarkleyOKRP’s latest acquisition and how VML thinks about fine-tuning through M&A.

Subscribe to the Agency Business newsletter.

Agency Business features agency CEOs and financial decision-makers alongside third party experts, including agency pitch consultants. We are always accepting pitches, and are particularly interested in hearing from women and leaders of color.

Email us!

📩 Brian at [email protected]

📩 Olivia at [email protected]

Follow Madison and Wall and FusionFront Media on LinkedIn for updates.

📊 The Madison and Wall Podcast – Brian opens up about his latest work—plus crucial economic, financial, and industry trends.

🎬 Screen & Sponsor – Olivia & VaynerMedia media manager Jessie Holder explore how brands are shaping Hollywood.

This episode is sponsored by Ebiquity.

Picture this: complete confidence that every dollar of your media budget is working as hard as possible.

That's what Ebiquity delivers. They are the world's leading media investment analysts, helping global brands turn media complexity into competitive advantage. Through independent, data-driven analysis, they identify inefficiencies, create transparency, and unlock hidden value in your media investments.

Over 80 of the world's largest advertisers trust Ebiquity for a reason. Visit ebiquity.com today and discover how they can help your brand.