Omnicom folds Marketforce into Oceania amid 15,000 cuts

Perth's oldest agency brand absorbed into the global machine

Marketforce, founded in 1974 and a fixture of Perth's advertising industry for 52 years, is being folded into Omnicom's broader Oceania structure, with its creative work transferring to 303 MullenLowe and its media business moving to OMD. The Marketforce brand is retired as a standalone operation.

Adam Marshall has been appointed Omnicom Oceania WA CEO to lead the consolidated West Australian operation. Marshall's appointment ends the dedicated Marketforce leadership model that had kept the agency running as a distinct Perth entity since Clemenger Group, an Omnicom affiliate, took a majority stake in 2014.^[1]

The merger arithmetic behind the decision

Omnicom completed its $13.5 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group on 26 November 2025, creating the world's largest marketing services group and immediately triggering a workforce reduction that Omnicom CFO Phil Angelastro confirmed at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference on 10 September 2026.^[2]

Angelastro said Omnicom is on track to cut its workforce from roughly 120,000 at the close of 2025 to approximately 105,000 by December 2026.^[2] That works out to about one in every eight employees gone within a year.

The Marketforce announcement landed five days after Omnicom's other major structural move of the week: the retirement of Troy Ruhanen as CEO of Omnicom Advertising and his replacement by Andrew Robertson.^[3] Robertson's said operating philosophy gives some context to what is happening in Perth.

Robertson said: "Our plan is clear. Secure a disproportionate share of the world's most exciting creative and strategic minds, equip them, through Omni, with the industry's most advanced AI enabled tools and data, to deliver exceptional results for a client list that is the envy of our competitors."^[3] Concentrating talent in fewer places means fewer distributed local brands carrying their own overhead.

What it means for state-based agency brands

Marketforce Express Pty Ltd and Marketforce Pty Ltd both appear on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC)'s public register of Omnicom's Australian subsidiaries, confirmed as of 13 May 2025, a register that now documents entities being absorbed rather than maintained as independent operations.^[1]

Omnicom's reasoning on Marketforce is simple: a state-based brand with its own management layer, office and identity costs money to keep distinct, and post-merger synergy targets make that cost harder to justify. WA clients whose work sat inside Marketforce will now be served by the 303 MullenLowe and OMD networks, both operating under Marshall's consolidated Oceania leadership.

Omnicom has not disclosed the exact number of Marketforce roles affected or confirmed which specific client accounts transfer, and those figures are not available in public filings. Angelastro's conference comments confirmed the pressure on headcount runs group-wide through to December 2026.