PepsiCo Moves Its Media to Publicis: Media Is Now Bought as an Operating Model

If you run an agency, you probably assume the dangerous moment with a client is the review, when the incumbent is invited to defend the account. If you run marketing in-house, you probably assume that changing agencies means running a pitch. PepsiCo's move of its global media account from Omnicom to Publicis suggests both assumptions are out of date for the largest advertisers, and worth checking for everyone else.

What happened, and what was said

PepsiCo confirmed to Marketing Dive by email, in a report published on September 3, 2026, that it is shifting its global media duties to Publicis Groupe. Marketing Dive reports that Publicis is standing up a One PepsiCo global media operating model for the account. Omnicom had handled the business for decades: more than 25 years by Digiday's count, three decades by MediaPost's. Adweek understands there was no pitch and that Publicis was appointed "following a media capabilities review." MediaPost says it is understood the assignment "shifted without a review." The two outlets describe the process differently, and both present it as their understanding rather than PepsiCo's confirmation. Adweek, citing sources, reports that Publicis will withdraw from the pitch for the remainder of Coca-Cola's global media business.

Omnicom has not lost the client entirely. A PepsiCo spokesperson told Adweek that Omnicom will remain a "critical strategic partner" across many creative, sports and PR briefs, and Digiday reports that Omnicom still handles PepsiCo's PR, creative and some sports marketing. On September 10, at Goldman Sachs' Communacopia and Technology Conference, Omnicom's CFO did not dress it up.

Angelastro said Omnicom is doing "a detailed kind of deconstruction of how it happened and what we should have been doing differently to prevent it from happening," and said Omnicom does not think it will have a significant impact on the business when it gets to 2027. On September 9, Omnicom announced that Andrew Robertson, chairman of BBDO Worldwide, is succeeding the retiring Troy Ruhanen as CEO of Omnicom Advertising. The release ties the timing to the completed Interpublic integration and does not mention PepsiCo. Nothing we read connects the two.

How big is the account? It depends on who is counting, and what.

The gap matters. The headline figure is media passing through the agency; the agency's own revenue is a small fraction of it.

Why Publicis? What the sources actually say

In the reporting we reviewed, PepsiCo has not said why it chose Publicis. It has said what it wants the new model to do. Its statement, as reported by Marketing Dive, describes transforming its media model for "the next era of marketing," integrating "media strategy, planning, activation, data, connected identity and technology across markets." The statement quoted by Adweek says the model should deliver "more relevant consumer connections" and "smarter marketing decisions" across paid, earned and shared media. Marketing Dive adds, citing Ad Age, that PepsiCo is running a separate review of its marketing services centered on AI transformation.

Everything else is speculation, and reported as such. MediaPost reports that the abruptness of the move led to speculation that pricing was a key factor, and that PepsiCo had not answered questions about the reason by deadline. Digiday lists other theories, including what Omnicom was pitching after its acquisition of IPG. None of them is confirmed.

What a no-pitch move says about how media is bought

Take PepsiCo's words at face value and the thing being bought is not a media plan or a rate card. It is an operating model: one system joining planning, buying, data, identity and technology across markets. That is our reading, not PepsiCo's stated rationale, but it changes agency selection in three ways.

• Evaluation moves from ideas to infrastructure. A pitch compares strategies and prices over a few weeks. An operating model depends on things that exist already or do not: identity resolution, data pipelines, cross-market technology and the teams that run them. Those can be assessed in a capabilities review, the process Adweek describes.
• Tenure stops being a defense. An incumbent's edge in a pitch is its knowledge of the account. When the client is choosing the model it wants to run next, decades of history describe the old one. Digiday, citing sources, reports that Angelastro's team did not see the move coming.
• Services split by layer. Media and data consolidate under one operator, while creative, PR and sports marketing can stay where they are. PepsiCo's arrangement with Omnicom now has that shape.

What smaller agencies, and the brands that hire them, should take from it

None of this means a mid-sized brand will switch agencies without a pitch next quarter. It does suggest the client's question is moving from who they like working with to whose system their marketing should run on.

For agencies

• Make your operating model visible. Write down, in a form a client's procurement team could audit, how data moves from their CRM and site into your planning and bidding, how audiences and identity are handled, which tools you run and who owns the accounts, and how results are measured and reported. If you cannot describe it, a client cannot evaluate it.
• Review yourself before the client does. Once a year, answer the questions a capabilities review would ask, with evidence. Assume you will not get a pitch to fix the gaps.
• Pick your layer and say so. If PepsiCo can consolidate media and data while keeping creative and PR with another partner, a smaller agency can be explicit about which layer it owns and how it connects to the rest. A clean interface is easier to buy than a vague full-service promise.

For in-house marketing leaders

• Own the parts that make switching possible. A move without a pitch only works if you know what you are buying and can take your assets with you. Ad accounts, first-party data pipelines, dashboards and technology contracts should sit in your name.
• Run capabilities reviews without running a pitch. A structured annual look at your agency's data, identity, tooling and reporting against what you need gives the incumbent a fair chance to close gaps before they become a reason to leave.
• Separate the fee from the billings. The Digiday figures show how far an agency's fee sits from the media it manages. Judge the arrangement on the fee and on the model you get for it, not on the size of the spend.