I often criticize adtech companies for messaging that fails to position them as the answer to the industry’s most urgent challenges or as the pioneer who will lead the industry (and, by extension, the company’s customers) into a new phase of growth. But agency holdcos take the cake on this front. Most of their messaging is an exercise in navel gazing about organizational structure. Of course, organizational structure matters, but a reorg is unlikely to shift investors’ perception of the industry and a holdco’s position within it. 

Publicis stands out among the holdcos for taking a bigger-picture approach to messaging. CEO Arthur Sadoun’s remarks on Publicis’ Q3 earnings call paint a very clear picture of the industry’s key challenges while positioning Publicis as the solution to them.

Consider Sadoun’s following remarks (including minor edits for clarity):

“Brands now have three imperatives to succeed: Be across thousands of media channels at the same time with custom content that fits every screen; show up less like an ad and more like a real conversation, using influencers to recommend their brand, as influencers’ reach now rivals that of some of the biggest publishers; and keep up with new shopping experiences — online, offline, and pay-to-play — to show up on digital shelves at the speed of commerce.

“Because media, creators, and commerce have all developed their own siloed and fragmented ecosystems … marketers are now at risk of losing control of their client relationships and being unable to link their marketing investments to business outcomes. At Publicis, we have been solving that challenge by developing a connected media ecosystem. We have invested in new capabilities to take clear leadership in those three areas. We have connected them to Epsilon identities, all while building this ecosystem transparently and directly in our clients’ own environments.”

In other words, Publicis is seeing a highly fragmented information ecosystem with siloed consumer activities and disparate sources of attention and authority. In their view, marketing and media appear to be in an era characterized primarily by extant and growing fragmentation. This fragmentation threatens marketers’ ability to do three things: understand their customers, reach them with the right message, and measure and optimize their efforts to do so. 

Having established fragmentation as the dominant challenge of the current era of marketing and media, Publicis bills itself as the marketing organization best positioned to solve that challenge, weaving in each of their key strategic moves and acquisitions over the past few years as part of the same effort. Specifically, Publicis claims to provide:

1. A comprehensive view of consumers (largely through Epsilon)

2. Personalized and authentic interactions across the many digital places consumers now congregate (through Epsilon as well as its investments in emerging channels such as influencer marketing and commerce media)

3. The ability to deliver and measure business outcomes (the capability that matters above all else in the Outcomes Era and one that Publicis is, in its telling, uniquely positioned to provide due to nos. 1 and 2 (its allegedly unparalleled understanding of consumers as well as its offerings across channels))

Like Viant in the adtech space, Publicis didn’t approach its Q3 earnings call like most advertising and adtech companies (namely, by pitching disparate solutions or sharing a loose collection of positive updates and hoping investors will put the picture together). Instead, Publicis is pitching a specific vision of the media landscape as one of unprecedented fragmentation — and its solutions, underpinned by Epsilon’s data capabilities and propelled by emerging channel-specific investments such as Influential and Mars United, as the most comprehensive answer to the challenges related to that vision.

This strategy extends beyond Publicis’ most recent earnings call. In the company’s acquisition announcements, it ties its various moves together to support a single overarching message: Publicis, driven by Epsilon, is the marketing organization most capable of leveraging consumer data to drive personalized interactions and business outcomes across the many channels where consumers now spend time. 

In the company’s 2021 acquisition of commerce media company CirtrusAd, for example, Publicis contends that “by combining CitrusAd with Epsilon’s Core ID, Publicis Groupe will create the industry’s first global retail media offering based on real identity.” In other words, if you want to avail yourself of the lower-funnel outcomes machine that is commerce media, turn to Publicis because they have the data to maximize the value of that emerging channel.

The playbook resurfaced earlier this year when Publicis acquired influencer marketing platform Influential. Publicis’ headline centered on Influential’s “network of over 3.5M creators including 90% of global influencers with 1M+ followers” — again, reach across modern media channels — and its subhead tied this reach to the Epsilon data capabilities at the core of Publicis’ offering. The holdco wrote, “Publicis Groupe’s understanding of consumers via Epsilon, combined with Influential’s platform, will enable brands to identify creators that meaningfully connect to their target customers and communities, while providing the unique ability to holistically plan, manage, and measure investment across social, digital, and affiliate marketing.”

Again: Understand consumers in an increasingly fragmented ecosystem. Reach them with personalized content. Drive, measure, and optimize business outcomes. And, critically, the company has made strategic investments (in Epsilon, CitrusAd, Influential, and Mars United, to name a few examples) to supply supporting evidence for its capabilities in these areas.

Publicis is up 140% over 5 years, while every other public holdco is essentially flat or down over the same period. No doubt, there are many reasons for this divergent performance. Commentators mentioned, for example, superior talent and a simplified organizational structure as advantages. But on the marketing front, while its competitors are looking inward, Publicis is pitching a clear view of their clients’ biggest challenges, and they’re consistently and convincingly positioning their biggest moves as a comprehensive answer to those challenges.

From a marketing perspective, shaping your audience’s understanding of the industry and positioning yourself as the cutting-edge solution to its most urgent challenges is exactly what a company should be doing, especially a public company that can make the investments required to lead. The other holdcos’ go-to-market teams should take a page from Publicis’ book.