Who is waiting to catch their breath?

The ink is barely dry on the Omnicom–IPG paperwork and already the industry feels like it has run a 10 kilometre sprint in office shoes.

Overnight, the largest advertising holding company in history has taken shape, with Omnicom swallowing IPG in a deal valued at around US$13 billion and promising at least US$750 million in annual cost savings.

Alongside the financial headlines came the real shock to the system: more than 4,000 jobs to be cut, on top of thousands already shed since the merger was first floated, and the retirement of names like DDB, FCB and MullenLowe as standalone brands, folded into TBWA and BBDO under a new “Omnicom Advertising” structure.

You can call it consolidation, synergy, efficiency. For the people inside the machine, it feels a lot like holding your breath.

In Malaysia, the room just got smaller.

Malaysia has been part of both holding company ecosystems for decades, from creative networks like Naga DDB Tribal, FCB and McCann, to media operations under IPG Mediabrands and Omnicom Media Group. Now every one of those P&Ls sits in the same global spreadsheet.

The timing could not be more surreal. Just days ago, Naga DDB Tribal was celebrating being named Agency of the Year 2025 at the Kancils, after a storming run of work for Ayam Brand, Astro, CelcomDigi and KFC. In the same news cycle, DDB globally is confirmed to be absorbed into TBWA as part of Omnicom’s restructuring, putting every DDB-branded operation under a giant strategic microscope.

On the media side, Omnicom has already said IPG’s media units, including IPG Mediabrands, will be merged into a unified Omnicom Media Group structure. In APAC, senior Mediabrands leaders are exiting as the new hierarchy takes shape.

So who exactly is trying to catch their breath in all this

1. Network staff living from townhall to townhall

For thousands of people inside Omnicom and IPG, life has shrunk to three horizons: the next townhall, the next reorg slide, the next HR email.

Globally, 4,000 roles are being cut in this round, on top of roughly 6,000 jobs already removed in earlier phases, taking total reductions close to 10,000 since the deal was first floated.  Officially, the focus is “mostly administrative” functions, with some leadership positions also on the line. In reality, few people believe that the creative and media coalface will stay untouched once the dust settles.

If you sit in a Malaysian office under either network, you are not asking big philosophical questions about “industry evolution”. You are asking smaller, sharper ones:

• Will my department still exist in six months
• Will my clients be reassigned to another city
• Will my boss even be here by Chinese New Year

These are not strategy questions. These are survival questions.

2. Clients trying to decode the new conflict map

Brands are being told this merger is good news for them. More scale. More data. Better rates. A single tech spine negotiating harder with Meta, Google and friends. 

In practice, Malaysian marketers are staring at a very different issue first: conflict.

When one holding company suddenly controls so many competing brands, conflict firewalls become a real test of credibility, not a line in a credentials deck. There will be categories in Malaysia where the same global group is now servicing direct rivals in creative, media or both.

This is happening at a time when the Media Specialists Association (MSA) here has just tightened best practice guidelines on pitches to address scope abuse and intellectual property issues. In other words, clients are being asked to behave better, while their agency options just shrank.

Many marketers are quietly asking themselves: am I still the client, or am I just a line in a global procurement model

3. Local independents trying not to get trampled

Every time a mega merger like this happens, people say, “This is great for independents.” In theory, yes. When giant networks focus inward on integration, local shops can move faster, specialise harder, and offer clients an escape route.

The problem is oxygen.

When one mega group commands such a huge share of media investment, technology partnerships and platform access, the air left in the room for independents gets thinner, especially in a relatively small market like Malaysia. Global deals increasingly dictate which adtech stacks are “approved”, which data platforms are “preferred”, which trading terms are “standard”.

Indies will not win by shouting louder. They will win by deciding who they want to be in this new ecosystem. Specialist, not generalist.

The clients who are also struggling to breathe will be looking for that kind of clarity.

4. Young talent wondering if this is still the dream

Ask any twenty something why they joined advertising and they rarely say “to optimise holding company synergies”.

They talk about culture. Craft. Mentors. The romance of agency names written on Cannes trophies and coffee mugs.

Now some of those names are being retired into history, not because the work was weak, but because a spreadsheet needed to be cleaner for investors. 

Across LinkedIn there are already posts from people in the US and Europe saying they are “gutted” to see DDB and FCB vanish as global flags, and even more gutted for the colleagues caught in mass redundancies.  That emotion will wash up on Malaysian shores too.

For many young Malaysian creatives and planners, the real question is now very simple:

Do I still see my future in a holding company structure, or do I build a different career inside brands, platforms or independents

5. Who is actually breathing easier

There are a few groups who might be sleeping better after this merger.

• Global investors, who like large, integrated stories with clear savings targets.
• Tech platforms, who now deal with an even more consolidated buying block on the agency side, which helps them structure enterprise level deals.
• Procurement departments, who prefer talking to fewer suppliers, at bigger scale, with harmonised rate cards.

For everyone else, this is not a moment of calm. It is a reset point.

So what should Malaysia’s marketers do now

If you are a Malaysian CMO, the most dangerous thing you can do right now is wait for “things to settle”.

This is the time to audit your real exposure to any one group across creative, media, data, and production. Not because holding companies are bad, but because concentration risk is real. This is also the time to re examine your brief to agencies. Are you rewarding genuine strategic and creative partnership, or just buying cheap reach off a consolidated machine

For agencies outside the merger, this is not a victory parade. It is an invitation to grow up. If you want clients to move spend, you must offer more than “we are independent”. You need sharper specialisation, cleaner governance, stronger talent benches and proof that you can handle complex business problems, not just nice scripts.

And for the people inside the new Omnicom structure, perhaps the question is not “Will things go back to normal” The industry you joined has been changing for years. AI, in housing, consultancies and platforms have been slowly redrawing the map. The merger simply turned that slow redraw into a bold outline.

So who is waiting to catch their breath

In Malaysia, probably everyone. The difference, as always, will be what you do with that first deep inhale.