Publicis Groupe has started 2025 more or or less as it finished 2024, reporting organic growth in Q1 of 4.9%. Last year it led the ad holding groups with 5.8% growth. Publicis’ Q1 4.9% tops Havas’s 2.1%. Publicis net revenue was up 9.4%.
All this, though, before Trumponomics hit the world with the US announcing tariffs on all sorts of goods from elsewhere (although the President seems to keep changing his mind about who’s being charged what.) This will obviously affect marketing budgets through the year, almost certainly adversely.
Publicis CEO Arthur Saqdoun (below) is choosing (for now) to ignore this rather large elephant in the room (Publicis’ biggest market is the US so he’s better watch his step.)
Sadoun says: “Publicis had a very strong Q1, with reported net revenue of +9.4%, including organic growth of +4.9%.
“We kick-started 2025 with a record new business run, with a dozen material wins across diverse sectors, geographies and expertise. This performance, placing us at the top of the rankings,2 once again, will allow us to offset the potential effects of the deteriorating macroeconomic context. It makes us extremely confident in delivering our 4-5% organic growth guidance for the year, translating to 6-7% at constant currency, including acquisitions.
“The first months of 2025 were also busy in terms of M&A. We have invested half a billion euros in data, creators, and digital media, reinforcing our position as a Category of One to deliver innovation and differentiation for our clients, and opening new addressable markets for us.
“Looking ahead, we have never been in a stronger position to help our clients, in the good times, and even more importantly, in the challenging ones. Thanks to the best identity graph in the industry, they can accelerate their growth by building direct relationships with their customers and their prospects.
“With our unique connected media ecosystem, they can optimize their investments and link them to business outcomes. Our production backbone enables them to minimize waste, and maximize creative asset reuse. And with our 25,000 engineers, they can future-proof their business in the age of AI.
“These unique competitive advantages, and our diversified revenue mix that continues to withstand business cycles, mean that today we are confident in outperforming not only in 2025 – for the 6th year in a row – but also beyond, in what will be a shrinking competitive landscape (Omnicom is planning to merge with IPG.).”
Publicis is clearly confident it can ride out the Trump tariffs. It will be interesting to see if the other ad holding groups – Omnicom, IPG, WPP, Dentsu with their different geographical biases – feel as confident.
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