Event Marketing was once a great force. This evolved into Brand Experience and Experiential, encompassing everything from PR stunts and product launches to billion dollar sponsorship strategy and activation. It’s felt like ‘the next big thing’, which makes Omnicom’s timing so interesting. Just as experiential is gathering real momentum, driven by brands wanting work that creates emotion at scale and across borders, travels through culture, and performs on social, the group has decided to sell Jack Morton, which is now merging with Impact XM under private‑equity ownership. On the face of it, that looks counterintuitive, but whilst Omnicom dealt with a lot of its creative agency ‘clutter’ decisively (swap that out for ‘brutally’ for the tens of thousands who’ve lost their jobs), it now has multiple competing giants under the same roof, and that’s very true in BX.
BX is more relevant by the day and accelerating. Real‑life experience still creates the moments people want to share, and sits closest to culture. It’s also one marketing discipline that can genuinely feel good about AI and is less prone to commoditisation. The value sits in physical craft, emotion and moments, none of which can be automated.
But Jack Morton sat alongside Momentum, GMR and TRO, all highly credible and scaled agencies, operating in similar spaces, with clear overlap. Although it already sounds and feels dramatic, the IPG integration has only just begun, and 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, so selling Jack Morton is the cleanest way to simplify without yet more protracted integration.
On the buyer side, the rationale is straightforward. Impact XM was already part of The Riverside Company’s portfolio, and adding Jack Morton gives them more capability, reach, and a more reliable delivery model, exactly what global clients expect when activity needs to land across multiple markets.
And it isn’t happening in isolation. Over the past year we’ve seen a broader consolidation across experiential and adjacent categories; Impact XM expanding through Touch Associates and Shelton Fleming, GES acquiring 2Heads, Strata buying Wonderland, Encore picking up FIRST, and even the networks making moves with Havas acquiring CA Sports and Stagwell taking Gold Rabbit. The Amplify/Common Interest deal we advised on last year pointed in the same direction too, putting experience, culture and content under one roof. This deal just plays out at a bigger, more international scale.
As time goes on, it’s clear that experience will be a crucial battle ground 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 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 they 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 of BX, with the World Cup landing in North America. Brands, both headline sponsors and guerrilla marketers, 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 this will be followed in two years by the LA Olympics 2028.
Which brings us back to Omnicom. If experiential is entering a growth cycle, could the group 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…
