Eric Siu talks to a Dentsu employee who says massive agencies like WPP and Publicis are too slow to adopt AI. At 75,000 people, they're stuck protecting existing revenue instead of moving fast like startups. They'll hurt but won't vanish anytime soon.
So I spoke to this guy at Dentsu. Dentsu is about 75,000 employees. So I was speaking to him and he believes that they're doomed. I was like, why do you think you guys are doomed? And he's like, we say we're doing this AI stuff, but we're just like a big tanker. We're not moving quickly enough and it's taking us a long time. And sure, we have all these like internal tools and all that, but it's kind of like a joke, right? And he's like, to be frank, like I'm speaking to you right now, but I'm also like WPP and Publicis, which are other big holding companies, have tried to poach me. But he sees the same outcome there. And he's like, it's also not a good signal when like a Dentsu is trying to sell because that doesn't show like a lot of confidence, right? And so I thought that was interesting. And so the question is, are these 75,000-person agencies doomed? I don't think they're going to die immediately. I think there's going to be a little bit of pain, but I think that's the reality. Right. And it's always been like this. Like startups, like smaller companies are going to move faster. They're more nimble. And like these companies too, they have to protect— it's more about wealth preservation for them instead of trying to move very quickly and break things all the time.
