Who will rein in the Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

It’s been a year of mergers and mayhem — but the Three Wise Men of discipline, distinctiveness, and direction might just hold the key to fending off an ad-pocalypse.

I love this time of year.
Giddy anticipation.
Nostalgic reflection.

And gosh, what a year we’ve had.

Omnicom devoured Interpublic in a US$26-billion feast — and promptly spit out a few agency brands and a few thousand staff. WPP continued its precipitous slide down the chute, right out of the FTSE 100 and into the waiting arms of McKinsey for what they hope will be a deft surgical repair. The entertainment and media world served up Warner to Netflix (or Paramount… whoever has the bigger appetite), with expectations of scaled inventory and US$2–3 billion in savings. And the media world delivered a Christmas miracle, posting 5–8% gains globally, including Canada.

Is this late good news the beginning of something new, or just the final gasp before the rattle?

Structural, financial, and existential forces are sweeping across the industry. Some challenges trace back to the unchecked behaviours of the Mad Men era; others emerge from shifting consumer tastes, technology, and geopolitics.

Playing victim rarely serves us well. Better to ask: What can we still control? What remains in our field of influence? I’d like to think there’s more good than bad on the horizon.

Being an Old Testament guy, I may be out of my depth — but the Four Horsemen, and their more uplifting counterparts, the Three Wise Men, have lessons to offer. And lately, the headlines read like they’re gearing up for a showdown.

In This Corner, the Horsemen

Horseman 1: Consolidation

The Omnicom–IPG merger wasn’t housekeeping. It was a signal. The combined group expects US$750 million in annual cost synergies and a level of data and tech heft only Publicis can match.

Their story is simple:

If you’re not very big or very specialized, you’re very easy to ignore.

Scale fuels data, tech stacks, and sophisticated services. Large clients — or those with complex problems — need real horsepower. Consolidation will continue to feed that need.

But small, sharp, highly focused shops will still thrive. Think retail boutiques coexisting with Walmart.

Horseman 2: Commoditization

WPP falling out of the FTSE 100 wasn’t a reshuffle. It was the market admitting that a company once built on creative and media magic is now priced like a utility.

The real threat isn’t that AI replaces agencies.

It’s that AI exposes how similar they already are.

ANA, WARC, and others report that only one in ten CMOs think agencies are very differentiated — and over 70% say agency positioning sounds the same.

Agencies must finally do unto themselves what they preach to clients.

Horseman 3: Confusion

The media ecosystem looks like late-stage Jenga.

Paramount is in acquisition limbo. Disney pulled Hulu closer. Amazon keeps reshaping MGM. Apple is hoarding sports rights. YouTube and influencers are siphoning youth from TV. Retail media. CTV. Gaming. Shoppable everything. And now Netflix wants both cultural oxygen and distribution.

Marketers face an all-you-can-eat buffet with a plate the size of a coaster. As the performance of “performance media” softens and fraud complaints rise, Google and Meta’s vice-grip will loosen — but it remains a bewildering battle zone.

Horseman 4: Contraction

The quietest but most consequential rider is contraction.

Agency fees and revenues are down. Real growth is evaporating. Budgets labeled “flat” are effectively cuts. Margins are thinning as operating and staff costs rise. Procurement is sharpening its elbows. Clients are using AI to interrogate and undercut hourly fee models.

It isn’t an ad-pocalypse. But it is the end of the economics the industry grew up with.

There’s no doubt: the Horsemen paint a grim picture.

But the future is unwritten.

Enter the Wise Men.

Wise Man 1: Discipline

Consolidation isn’t the enemy. Complexity is.

The organizations thriving today aren’t the ones talking transformation — they’re the ones that removed friction years ago.

P&G’s 2% growth in 2025 may not set hearts racing, but compared with Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Kimberly-Clark, General Mills, Kellanova, and Clorox, it was a win.

Between 2014 and 2019, P&G cut its brand portfolio from 170 to roughly 65, exited low-growth categories, trimmed management layers, and invested in product superiority. They proved that even public companies with impatient shareholders can cut costs and still reinvest.

It’s a blueprint for agencies today.

Wise Man 2: Distinctiveness

If an LLM cannot find you, people won’t either.

Agencies worship distinctiveness but rarely practise it.

Uncommon Studios treats intellectual property like a revenue engine. Mischief chose small, fast, and famously conversation-driven. In Canada, Rethink and Courage dominate the airwaves — but there’s room for others to carve out something unmistakable. Nail that, and AI isn’t a threat. It’s a multiplier.

Brands see the same effect.

Liquid Death behaves like a thrash-metal band disguised as a beverage company — and grew 26% in 2025.

Ryanair is Europe’s most profitable airline partly because its voice is unmistakable; even the complaints advertise the brand.

AI homogenizes. Tastemakers differentiate. If a bot can copy you, your competitors already have.

Wise Man 3: Direction

Chaos exposes leadership gaps faster than any audit or consultant. In 2025, most companies felt it: 77% say they lack leadership depth. Leadership-development budgets have fallen as much as 70% since 2023. That’s the termite in the foundation.

Organizations still outperforming have leaders with a clear, confident point of view. Ask an executive to explain the 2026 plan in an elevator. If they can’t, they don’t have one.

At Wieden+Kennedy, Neal Arthur keeps the company principled, decentralized, and talent-first. At Mischief, Greg Hahn and the NFA team protect the creative conditions that make the work possible. At Mother, Robert Saville and Mark Waites built a partnership model that distributes leadership instead of bottling it.

Agencies spend 60% of revenue on people. A few extra shekels on developing leaders seems like an obvious investment.

Horsemen? Wise Men? Who Wins?

The Horsemen make great headlines. They feed the industry’s appetite for melodrama. And humans are wired to notice the threat before the opportunity.

But their lessons are useful. They remind us that leaders still control three variables that matter: discipline, distinctiveness, and direction. Everything else is noise.

I don’t believe the world is ending. It’s simply losing patience with those who haven’t decided who they are. I’ll ride with the Wise Men.

The Horsemen get too much press already.