Michael Rebelo.
Michael Rebelo, CEO, Publicis Groupe ANZ and Chairperson Advertising Council of Australia.
Our industry just got smaller. Forrester reports an 8% drop in agency headcounts in 2025 amid the most sweeping cultural and organisational changes the sector has seen in years.
Consolidations, new ventures, asset sales and high-profile dissolutions have redrawn the map, creating a radically different canvas for 2026. Is it a sign of the times? Absolutely. But it’s also a wake-up call.
Here’s the truth: being ‘the most’ won’t be enough anymore. The most creative, the most effective, the most human, or even the most AI-driven. None of these alone will guarantee success.
Integration? If you’re only seriously turning your attention to that now, you’re already behind. It’s as much cultural as it is operational. The bigger imperative is to build an environment where your ambition is to become your client’s most valuable partner. Everything else flows from that.
The winners of tomorrow will be those who can turn a traditional competitive edge into a compounding advantage. That means taking your hard-earned capabilities, layering them intelligently and creatively to build something bigger than the sum of its parts.
If the best things you’ve built over the last five years work in isolation, then again, you’re already behind. If you’ve been chasing short-term wins, that won’t cut it either.
Success now depends on how you stack your advantages. It means connecting media, CRM, influence and AI through creativity that doesn’t just solve client problems but transforms them into new opportunities and importantly demonstrates measurable business impact.
This isn’t just about organisational design. It’s about cultures that amplify collaboration, partnerships and a client-first mindset.
And it’s about scale – not size. Scale matters because it gives you the breadth of talent and capabilities to navigate an increasingly complex and interdependent media landscape, and the capital to invest in your future.
Because the reality is volatility and disruption have become the defining features of the modern landscape. The only constant is adaptability.
We started thinking this way almost a decade ago and made three big bets: putting data and technology at our core, implementing a country model for market-adaptable, client led solutions, and building a single operational backbone. Those bets are paying off as transformation sweeps across search, production, media, commerce and influencer marketing.
Our purpose is clear. Help clients navigate continuous transformation. And that requires more than integration, it requires muscle memory. It demands creative business transformation, powered by connecting strategies, capabilities and operations. That’s how you create an advantage that compounds.
2026 won’t reward the biggest or the flashiest. It will reward the most connected, the most intelligent and the most resilient. In a year defined by sharper pressures and faster cycles, the real winners will be the ones who don’t just compete – they compound. Because in this new landscape, advantage isn’t taken. It’s built, accelerated and earned, day after day, year after year.