Who is winning in 2025? Three Players, Three Winning Formulas

For years, the marketing industry revolved around the Big Six:

→ 6 holding companies

→ 6 battle-hardened competitors

→ 6 interchangeable propositions

But in 2025, that’s no longer the game.

The market has spoken, and three names are emerging as the future:

✅ Publicis

✅ Accenture Song

✅ Stagwell

Each one plays by different rules, but all have cracked the formula that clients actually want.

The old rules?

Irrelevant.

Scale alone no longer wins.

The winners are:

✅ Agile

✅ Tech-driven

✅ Aligned with business outcomes

The three players dominating the landscape aren’t just winning business.

→ They’re reshaping how marketing itself functions.

Publicis → The Architect of the New Holdco

Forget the slow-moving, siloed structures of legacy holding companies.

Publicis has spent the last decade engineering a model that works.

Their ‘Category of One’ strategy

An integrated, tech-first approach has transformed them from a traditional holdco into a connected powerhouse.

Their latest move?

Beating WPP for Coca-Cola North America’s media business, cementing their dominance and validating their strategy.

Their recent acquisition of Lotame only adds to their competitive strength, expanding their data capabilities to a level others simply can’t match.

While rivals talk about AI, Publicis implements it through CoreAI, they’re pioneering AI-powered marketing with direct, measurable business outcomes.

What makes Publicis different is that they’re not just offering marketing services.

They’re selling an integrated ecosystem that seamlessly connects:

✅ Data

✅ Media

✅ Creativity

✅ Technology

Clients are gravitating toward this model because it removes:

✅ Friction

✅ Eliminates inefficiencies

✅ Delivers measurable business impact.

→ While Omnicom and IPG prepare for years of post-merger integration.

→ Publicis is running full speed ahead, acquiring, innovating, and expanding its lead.

👉 They’re not waiting for the industry to catch up → they’re shaping the industry itself.

Accenture Song → The Reinvention Partner

Accenture Song isn’t an agency.

It’s a consultancy that happens to be brilliant at marketing.

That’s the difference.

While traditional agencies fight for a seat at the pitch table.

Accenture Song is already sitting in the boardroom, shaping client strategy from the inside.

Their numbers prove it.

That’s not just marketing.

It’s business transformation.

Their approach is simple:

→ solve the client’s deepest business problems, and the marketing spend follows naturally.

"We are helping Spotify optimise its advertising business by finding opportunities to drive efficiency as it scales globally " Julie Sweet, Chair and Chief Executive Officer (source: Accenture's First Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Conference Call)

No wonder they’re taking market share while others are losing ground.

What sets Accenture Song apart is their ability to embed themselves within client organisations as long-term reinvention partners.

"We have the ability to integrate creative, data and AI, tech and strategy while leveraging our industry and operations expertise to unlike marketing as a growth enabler for our clients while delivering efficiencies." Julie Sweet, Chair and Chief Executive Officer (source: Accenture's First Quarter Fiscal 2025 Earnings Conference Call)

Instead of being seen as an external vendor, they position themselves as an extension of the client’s leadership team:

✅ Helping companies undergo digital transformations

✅ Build AI-driven personalisation strategies

✅ Rethink customer experiences from the ground up

Their value proposition is compelling because they combine strategic advisory services with execution at scale.

This means clients don’t have to hire separate firms for:

✅ Consulting

✅ Creative

✅ Technology implementation

Accenture Song does it all, ensuring alignment from strategy to execution.

👉 As marketing budgets shift toward customer experience, AI-powered solutions, and full-scale transformation, Accenture Song is uniquely positioned to capture this demand.

Stagwell → The Challenger That’s Changing the Game

Publicis is the architect

Accenture Song is the strategist,

Stagwell is the scrappy, street-smart disruptor.

✅ They’re digital-first

✅ Performance-driven

✅ And built to scale

And unlike the traditional holdcos, they’re not burdened by legacy structures or bureaucratic complexity.

→ Their formula is a mix of smart acquisitions and relentless client focus.

→ They’ve bagged major wins like General Motors, Adobe, Starbucks, and Visa.

They’re aggressively expanding into EMEA, proving that their model scales globally.

And they’re investing on SaaS and AI-powered marketing tools, creating an ecosystem that integrates technology with execution.

• Stagwell’s differentiator is its “full-service meets self-service” model.
• While traditional holdcos rely on large, retainer-based engagements.
• Stagwell offers both full-service marketing and SaaS-driven self-service tools for in-house teams.

Their Stagwell Marketing Cloud gives clients access to AI-powered research, automated media buying, and in-depth analytics allowing brands to take more control while still leveraging Stagwell’s expertise when needed.

→ This approach resonates particularly well with mid-market brands and high-growth companies that don’t want to be locked into traditional agency contracts.

→ It also appeals to enterprise clients that want the agility of a tech-driven model but still need full-service support on high-impact campaigns.

👉 By blending PE-backed acquisitions with digital-first execution, Stagwell is proving that you don’t need a legacy network to win big in modern marketing.

What Winning Models Are Emerging?

The market is rewarding companies that go beyond traditional agency offerings and deliver holistic, business-aligned solutions.

Three dominant models are emerging:

1) The Integrated Holdco Model (Publicis)

→ Publicis has proven that a connected, data-driven, and tech-enabled model is what clients want.

→ Their focus on first-party data, AI-driven marketing, and seamless cross-discipline collaboration has set a new benchmark.

2) The Consultancy-Led Model (Accenture Song)

→ Clients are increasingly drawn to firms that can solve broader business challenges, not just marketing problems.

→ Accenture Song is thriving because it offers end-to-end transformation services that make traditional agency pitches feel outdated.

3) The Digital-First Model (Stagwell)

→ Stagwell is proving that a leaner, tech-focused model can win over clients that need both scale and agility.

→ Their ability to offer both full-service and SaaS-driven self-service solutions positions them uniquely against legacy holdcos.

For companies still competing with these three, the writing is on the wall:

Staying relevant means evolving.

→ Legacy holdcos must rethink their structures

→ Consultancies need to expand execution capabilities

→ PE-backed networks must ensure that their rapid growth doesn’t come at the cost of integration and effectiveness.

The Strategic Implications for Agencies, Consultancies, and PE-Backed Firms

The shift we’re witnessing is profound.

👉 For legacy holdcos like WPP and Omnicom-IPG

→ The old holding company model is struggling to keep pace.

→ The key challenge is integration without seamless alignment between media, data, and creative, they risk losing further ground.

→ They must either fully commit to integration or face obsolescence.

👉 For consultancies

→ Accenture Song’s success is a wake-up call for firms like Deloitte Digital and TCS.

→ Winning in marketing requires more than strategic advisory and it requires execution at scale.

→ Those that fail to expand execution capabilities will lose to those that can deliver both.

👉 For PE-backed firms

→ Stagwell has demonstrated how a tech-driven, acquisition-led strategy can work, but the challenge for PE-backed agencies is maintaining consistency across their portfolios.

→ Scaling is one thing but integrating acquisitions into a seamless offering is another.

Marketing in 2025 isn’t just about scale

It’s about creating business impact.

→ The winners have figured that out.

→ The rest are either adapting or continue falling behind.

Now the question is: who pivots fast enough, and who gets left behind?

Ivan Fernandes

Marketing Management | M&A Deal Flow