Omnicom high-flyer Alex Hesz on holdco strategy: ‘Clients want one arse to kick’

Hesz pointed out Omnicom agencies already collaborate a lot: “There's been an assumption, incorrectly, that because of Omnicom’s respect for the agency brands — because of Omnicom’s respect for giving specialists the opportunity to work within specialist agencies, because of that federative [holdco] structure — that Omnicom doesn't show up as Omnicom.”

Sometimes one agency or discipline will take the lead — so an account “will be led by OMG or led by BBDO or led by OPMG [Omnicom Precision Marketing Group]”. But, increasingly, clients are looking to the ultimate parent company because “sometimes they want one arse to kick, they want a centralised, brilliantly orchestrated offering of specialists”, he explained.

“And when we show up as Omnicom. that requires us to have certain things that are connective tissue, and my belief is that strategy is a horizontal. Strategy can connect to customer experience, to precision, to shopper [marketing], to creative.”

For now, at least, Hesz does not have a team that reports directly to him. He describes working with “a group of cross-functional strategists” from across Omnicom’s different disciplines who can “huddle around the most exciting, highest-value, most intractable, most exciting problems, opportunities, new business opportunities — whatever they may be”.

Some of this work might be “pro bono” or “incremental” or collaborating with Omnicom’s client leaders, he said.

”The ability to recruit internally and borrow resources like that [to drive growth and integration] is really exciting. In time, I'd like to move towards having less of a borrowed resource and more of a semi-owned resource.

“But that’s beholden on me to prove that out, to prove that model and to scale it. It is a new function within Omnicom — to have a practitioning/strategy function within the corporate tier.”

“Thinking several moves ahead”

Industry observers say Hesz’s ability to corral different parts of Omnicom and, in particular, to win the co-operation of agency bosses across the group will be a test.

Hesz has started with several advantages because he has a mandate from Wren, he knows how the company works from his DDB days and a lot of Omnicom’s agency leaders are “familiar faces”.

Former colleagues say Hesz is good at thinking ahead and adapting to different clients.

David Golding, co-founder of New Commercial Arts and previously of Adam & Eve/DDB, said: “Alex is almost unique among strategists I have worked alongside. He’s capable of talking to the highest powers in Silicon Valley and to the category manager on a local FMCG brand with equal levels of enthusiasm and inspiration.”

Golding went on to use a chess analogy about Hesz’s new holding company role, saying “his ability to see the whole board, while thinking several moves ahead” will help in “landing and keeping big and complex global clients”.

Xavier Rees, the chief executive of Havas UK, who was previously group managing director of Adam & Eve/DDB when he worked with Hesz, also highlighted the Omnicom strategy chief's ability to work with a broad range of clients.

“Alex is an incisive thinker who’s as confident working with a start-up as with the biggest brands on the planet,” Rees said. “He’s also a great story-teller which made him pretty compelling in front of clients — particularly in a pitch room.”

Others who have worked with Hesz described him as “extremely fast”, in contrast to “a lot of ponderous planners”, and an “armour-piercing individual” who thinks about the bigger picture for clients.

Some mentioned he can also be a “lone wolf”. On that point, Hesz said: “I like doing work.” When some people move into management, there’s an expectation that they become “delegators”. But he is happy to get involved — “writing the deck and then coming back to the team and going, ‘Here's how I've put some thoughts together’” — even “if it means that sometimes I get seen as a lone wolf”.

Holdco vs agency brands

Hesz says that Omnicom will talk more in the coming weeks and months about its offer. There is a sense that these are still early days in the articulation of Omnicom’s evolving strategy — despite Wren having been CEO since 1997.

“We want more information,” one Omnicom agency executive told Campaign privately when asked what they thought of the parent company’s recent hires.

Wren keeps a low profile but the appointment of Saxton, who started in January as CMO, was a sign that Omnicom wants to be more vocal and get better at telling its story publicly.

There is a perception in the market that Omnicom is becoming more like WPP and Publicis, which have both elevated the holdco brand in recent years.

Lucinda Peniston-Baines, co-founder of The Observatory International, which advises clients on agency selection and runs pitches, said: “Historically Omnicom was fiercely protective of their agency brands — in many respects rightly so.

“However other holdcos have recognised client demands to drive integration by bringing together teams with top talent from multiple agencies within their portfolios, and that’s inevitably placed pressure on Omnicom to follow suit.

“Indeed they moved to demonstrate this on two global pitches that The Observatory managed [and Omnicom won], resulting in Team O.P.E.N. for Peugeot in 2020 and Team X for Mercedes-Benz in 2021.

“These recent senior hires [such as Hesz and Saxton] signal a doubling down on this strategy. It will be interesting to see how this plays out against the competition who have a longer track record in this space.”

Hesz maintains that moving to more of a holding company solution is “not a pivot away of some existing strategy” for Omnicom.

“This is the distillation of an existing strategy into a sharper value proposition that reflects what clients need right now, which is performance, growth, outcomes,” he said.

“They don't necessarily care which logo has delivered those outcomes for them but we do because we need to respect those [agency] businesses and their ability to recruit the world's top talent.

“We know that the world’s top talent responds to the world’s top agency brands, not to homogeneity, not to huge corporate brands.”

The pushback against this narrative about “reverence” for the agency brands is that Omnicom has been moving its agencies into shared buildings.

“What I love about this place is it scales,” Hesz said of Bankside (pictured above), the home of virtually all of Omnicom’s London agencies — with the exception of Adam & Eve/DDB.

The different agencies are “respected” and have their own physical spaces, with “radically different cultures and working practices”, but they also have areas to “connect with one another” and for “serendipity to drive creativity”.

Not joining Dentsu

Part of the reason why industry observers are interested in Hesz’s new role at Omnicom is the dramatic way that he pulled out of his job with Dentsu — and what that said about the fortunes of the two companies. Campaign’s news story that revealed his U-turn in October was one of our most read of the year.

Hesz says “it's very easy to sensationalise my decision” as a reaction against Dentsu’s merger of its Japanese and international operations, which led to Clark’s exit, but he found it “relatively easy” to turn down the job.

When he initially agreed to join Dentsu, he was looking to “start a new adventure” but as he waited to start, “the corporate strategy of Dentsu changed” and “the nature of that adventure changed”.

Dentsu’s restructure would have meant he had to move to Japan and he did not want to relocate with his wife and children from London. “There are certain things in life that are more important than a paycheck and a big title,” he said.

He won’t criticise Dentsu, saying “it's really important to respect people” and “the last thing people need is negativity”.

How far in advance did he know Clark would be leaving, before Campaign broke the news on 1 September? There were discussions during “the latter half of my waiting for my start date” when Dentsu was talking about bringing Japan and international closer.

“It became clear” that a change of corporate strategy was on the agenda — “Wendy was very open about that, Dentsu were very open about that, there was no cloak and dagger,” he said.

However, Hesz admitted he only found out about Clark’s departure “relatively soon before it became public knowledge”. He added: “It wasn't by any means the decisive factor in my decision” not to join Dentsu.

Hesz started talking to other companies and Omnicom wanted to take him back. Importantly, he felt the US agency group would allow him to do “the type of work I want to do” and is moving in “the direction in which I believe the industry is headed”, he said.

One insider suggests that Omnicom first put the global CSO role on the table in 2021 when the company made a counter-offer in a bid to persuade him not to go to Dentsu. Hesz won’t comment directly, saying only that he had committed to Dentsu and didn’t want to get into a “tit for tat negotiation”.

Why not a start up?

Hesz has an interest in the world beyond advertising. He has done some work for the Tony Blair Institute and his family opened their doors to two young Ukrainians, Victoria and Olha, who lived with them after fleeing the war last year.

But he has stayed loyal to the agency sector, describing it as a "competitive team sport". Now he is working with $100m clients but why not try another path — as a founder?