For many entrepreneurs and advertisers, 2023 was a surprisingly difficult yr. Promoting spend continued to decelerate, and even decline, in some depressed classes like linear TV. Spooked, and terrified of entrepreneurs tightening their purse strings but once more, a variety of businesses resorted to layoffs. In the meantime, a number of accounts went into evaluate.
It’s been a tragic yr for WPP’s GroupM within the U.S., characterised by giant losses like Kimberly-Clark, Basic Mills, Uber and Shell, regardless of the group’s success successful enterprise overseas. It was additionally one other powerful yr for Horizon Media, which misplaced Geico in 2023 after dropping its Burger King account price $229 million in 2022.
It wasn’t unhealthy for all businesses. A number of rose above their opponents this yr as evaluations wrapped and accounts price lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} modified fingers. Holding firm outcomes are a combined bag, and Publicis Groupe is now main in income development on the yr relative to its opponents. A number of giant accounts—T-Cell and Amazon—are nonetheless within the midst of their company evaluations. These outcomes have potential to tip the scales in one other company’s favor within the new yr.
Businesses’ technological prowess, plus their knowledge and integration talents, determined many outcomes.
It’s because generative synthetic intelligence captivated the skilled world this yr, and entrepreneurs puzzled the way it might make their methods higher, quicker or cheaper to implement. As an alternative of concerning AI as a menace to their enterprise fashions, most businesses leaned into advisory roles and positioned themselves as expertise specialists outfitted to advise shoppers on these widespread adjustments. That is no shock, on condition that shoppers count on businesses to have a deal with on all the things from knowledge privateness and authorities regulation to pop-culture influencers and TikTok developments.
To finish the yr’s new enterprise protection, we compiled the ten most attention-grabbing account wins of 2023:
Verizon
Earlier company: IPG’s McCann
New company: Ogilvy
Measurement of account: In 2022, Verizon spent $3.6 billion on advertising, in keeping with public monetary paperwork.
Why it’s important: Former Verizon chief advertising officer Diego Scotti employed McCann in 2015, however roster dynamics modified after Scotti left the corporate earlier this yr. Ogilvy beforehand labored with Verizon on the Verizon Enterprise account, impressing leaders sufficient that they awarded it the buyer account with out ever initiating a proper evaluate. In a employees memo obtained by Adweek, McCann international CEO Daryl Lee wrote, “Over the previous yr, it has turn out to be a shopper of inventive leap balls, making it extraordinarily laborious for McCann to do what we do finest, which is to create enduring model platforms that assist all the things a model says and does constantly.”
