Experiential and the real life initiatives it excels in, is gathering momentum, driven by brands wanting work that creates emotion at scale and across borders, travels through culture and performs on social.
Just as the discipline becomes increasingly powerful and relevant, Omnicom has decided to sell Jack Morton. On the face of it, a strangely counterintuitive move. Also as a discipline whose value sits in physical craft, emotion and moments to defy automation, it’s pretty much alone in being able to feel genuinely positive in the face of AI and commoditisation.
So why would Omnicom exit a discipline in the ascendant ?
The business context is obvious. Omnicom might have dealt with much of its creative agency ‘clutter’ decisively (swap that out for ‘brutally’ for the tens of thousands who’ve lost their jobs), but it still has multiple competing giants under the same roof and that includes experiential.
Jack Morton sat alongside Momentum, GMR and TRO, all highly credible and scaled agencies, operating in similar spaces with clear overlap.
And although it’s already rocked the industry to its core, the IPG integration has really only just begun. With Omnicom heavily focused on media, data, and its Omni platform, running multiple experiential shops doesn’t appear to be where the group wants to spend attention or capital.
It may be that selling Jack Morton, which is merging with Impact XM under private‑equity ownership, is the cleanest way to simplify without yet more protracted integration.
On the buyer side, Impact XM, owned by PE company The Riverside Company, gains capability and reach through the kind of reliable delivery model that global clients demand when activity needs to land across multiple markets.
Why experiential?
The deal isn’t happening in isolation. Consolidation across experiential and adjacent categories has been quietly taking place over the last year. Before partnering with Jack Morton, Impact XM expanded through Touch Associates and Shelton Fleming; GES acquired 2Heads; Strata bought Wonderland and Encore picked up FIRST. Even the networks got involved, with Havas acquiring CA Sports and Stagwell taking Gold Rabbit.
The Amplify/Common Interest deal Waypoint advised on last year is part of the same direction of travel, putting experience, culture and content under one roof.
And lest we forget, experiential is well protected by the kind of CMO ego that revels in the prestige of huge public-facing sponsorship and events where a brand gets to show the world its best possible face. These activations tend to be protected by a “beyond ROI status”, where global brands understand their value as a relationship-building device that sits beyond conventional measurement.
Social, meet experiential?
If these benefits weren’t enough, with the rise of social and influencer, experiential and sponsorship are now able to leverage incredible word-of-mouth marketing that’s given both a new lease of life and relevancy. In the case of sponsorship, “revival” might not be too strong a word.
It’s clear that experience will be a crucial battleground for brands, driven by how well experience, social and creators work together. Brands aren’t buying standalone events anymore; they want experiences that produce content that people actually share, give creators something to work with, and link back to real outcomes, like sign‑ups or sales.
If an activation can’t do that, it doesn’t make the cut. And clients need it delivered reliably across markets; something that, thus far, the sector hasn’t consistently managed.
This year could be a landmark for this new era, with the World Cup landing in North America. Headline sponsor brands and guerrilla marketers alike will need everything from traditional linear media (yes, they will) to fan zones, hospitality, travelling builds and creator‑led content delivered globally at speed. And in two years we’ll have the 2028 LA Olympics, demanding more of the same.
Networks vs independents?
Yes, scale is key for a discipline like experiential. Yet sitting outside of the networks allows an agency to escape from the quarterly reporting cycle and an opportunity to experiment with different pricing strategies, to build product and even flex its business model.
While experiential looks like being less of a priority for the networks currently, we may see newly independent businesses like Jack Morton acquiring local specialists across markets – or even social-and influencer-first groups on the lookout for similar targets and thereby adding in complementary capabilities.
It’s only logical to wonder whether as experiential enters a growth cycle, could Omnicom have kept multiple brands and enjoyed more of the upside? Possibly. But historically it has tolerated more duplication in creative than in experiential.
If reducing overlap is now the theme, and Jack Morton is the first move, the obvious next question is what that implies for its multiple international PR networks……….
