Ritson: ‘Publicis has done nothing but prove agile structures are a load of BS’

There was a flurry of press coverage a year ago when Publicis Groupe announced Arthur Sadoun would replace long-serving chief executive Maurice Lévy. The media frenzy was understandable. Publicis is one of the big five advertising agencies and Lévy had been running the groupe for two decades.

A change at the helm was always going to be newsworthy but Sadoun wasted no time making his mark on the agency group and generating a bundle of new headlines. On 20 June last year he dropped three simultaneous bombshells.

First, he wanted to change Publicis from a “holding company to a platform”. The CEO described his vision of a new Publicis that would be freed from its existing structure and transformed into one that was “an agile, flat, modular, dynamic organisation that would create new value for clients and everyone within the organisation”.

Lees deze column van Mark Ritson op Marketingweek