Mark Penn on Stagwell’s challenger status as Omnicom-IPG merger looms

Apart from the Philadelphia Eagles, one in every of the massive winners of Super Bowl LIX was Stagwell, the holding company whose agencies crafted a number of the big game’s best ads and most engaging off-the-field brand experiences. Stagwell’s 72andSunny was behind a pair of purpose-driven spots for the NFL, while the group’s Anomaly teamed Post Malone, Shane Gillis and Peyton Manning for an epic cul-de-sac party. The spots — three of the highest ten efforts in USA Today’s Ad Meter — could serve as a weather vane for the direction of creative in 2025.

“People are largely going back to business and to the universal causes that everyone subscribes to,” Stagwell Chairman and CEO Mark Penn said. “The work for the NFL was particularly in step with what I prefer to see in good Super Bowl promoting, and I assumed that Bud Light is de facto coming back. Some people need to just get back to their basic roots; that is what Bud Light has been successfully doing.”

Anomaly also helped Starbucks advertise across the game with a highly anticipated campaign that the chain hopes will help it reintroduce its embattled brand to consumers. Instructively, it was also Anomaly’s first work for the brand since taking on creative from WPP — a move announced in January, just months after WPP created a bespoke unit for the account. 

The surprising switch-up is the kind of win that Stagwell and its subsidiaries have looked to rack up as the corporate continues to determine itself as a challenger to legacy holding firms. The approach is working: Stagwell saw growth across its business areas in Q3 2024, led by 25% growth in digital transformation and 30% growth in its marketing cloud group.

Ahead of Stagwell’s announcement of Q4 and FY24 earnings on Feb. 27, Marketing Dive caught up with Penn concerning the company’s approach to mergers and acquisitions, data and artificial intelligence (AI) at a moment when the Omnicom-IPG merger could put its challenger proposition in sharper relief.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

MARKETING DIVE: Stagwell recently continued its acquisitive streak with a deal for Gold Rabbit Sports. How are you approaching M&A at this juncture?

MARK PENN: I all the time say that we’re a young person on the way in which up, so acquisitions proceed to be a really strong a part of our strategy, particularly expanding into recent regions. We’ve done numerous overseas acquisitions within the last 12 months, ensuring that we’re on the frontiers of technology with acquisitions like Left Field Labs. Those two elements — being on the frontier of latest marketing and expanding our global chops — are really the 2 areas where we’re focusing, but we’re definitely continuing to aggressively spend money on the [sports] area.

How is Stagwell’s positioning as a substitute for the normal holding firms affected by the Omnicom-IPG merger plans?

I do not think that marketers are sitting there saying that they need one other behemoth. I feel they’re sitting there saying they need one other Stagwell. They want fourth-generation creative, more digital agencies, more ability to make use of social media. 

They’re looking loads more now on the offerings that we have been putting together at Stagwell, because I feel our acquisitions and constructing blocks are fresh, recent and modern, whereas the behemoths are having to essentially wipe out a whole bunch of billions of dollars of retro agencies that may’t really discover a spot available in the market anymore. 

We’re on the way in which up, they’re on the way in which somewhat down… We’re within the position that we wish to be as the challenger holding company.

Can you tell me more about Stagwell ID Graph and the AI-based content development platform that you simply’re calling the Machine?

We provide core marketing services, data and media and digital transformation. In core marketing services, we’re broadening the geography and ensuring that we’re got the proper social content to balance the opposite content machines. In data and media, we’ve a really extensive global network that’s performance-led in some ways.

We’re constructing out more prolonged data underpinning to refine and improve our offerings with the ID graph, which utilizes numerous our own proprietary data, and the Machine, which is a mixture of us and Adobe, to administer the flood of content that a contemporary marketing campaign really has today. Those two things are really going to boost [our offering]. We think they’re months away, not years away.

Where do you see marketers within the journey of incorporating AI, amid this rush to see what works and what doesn’t?

We’re really at relatively early stages of full incorporation of AI. AI continues to be determining what it may do and what its capabilities are as they proceed to enhance. We have a jump on that, because we already had arrange a central innovation group several years ago. We have our own [chief technology officer] and engineering team [to focus on] internal innovation at scale. That gives us an actual leg up by way of our ability to integrate AI into the important thing areas where you are going to see it, which is content development and refining the use of information.