Wavemaker and Publicis Media Win Adobe's $500 Million Global Media Review

Adobe's media review concluded this week with its decision to split its approximately $500 million global b-to-c media business between WPP and Publicis Media. The holding companies will co-operate a new global center of excellence to service the account. GroupM agency Wavemaker not only retained Adobe's Americas business spanning the U.S., Latin America and Canada, but expanded its purview. Previously focused on brand marketing initiatives, Wavemaker now manages Adobe's full-funnel strategy. The Americas business alone is worth $185 million, according to an RFP letter Adobe sent to agencies last August that Adweek later obtained. A source close to the matter tells Adweek Wavemaker's Americas purview is actually worth as much as $250 million. WPP will also manage three global business lines for Adobe, worth about $100 million, according to the source. “Adobe is now a top 10 client for us globally. This is a fantastic result fueled by our attitude of Positive Provocation, a phenomenal team effort and collaboration across Wavemaker, GroupM and WPP,” said Toby Jenner, global CEO at Wavemaker, in a statement.Publicis Media won the international business, including the EMEA, APAC and Japan markets. The August RFP notes the international account is worth $296 million. Both holding companies will also lead the agencies' global COE, and will keep regional teams aligned with a single overarching marketing strategy. Adobe CMO Ann Lewnes to Retire After 16 Years Active partnerships with as many as 17 agencies complicated Adobe's marketing operations and prompted the review. In the RFP letter, Adobe's former CMO Ann Lewnes referred to the roster as "a set of disparate regional media agencies." Although Adobe concluded the review just over a month after Lewnes retired, she'd spent the previous months reorganizing Adobe's marketing department to make a single, global strategy easier to realize. Now with just two agency partners, Adobe hopes it will be easier for its regional marketing teams to deliver consistent messaging. However, Adobe's goals still vary by geography. The brand focuses on gaining traction with audience segments in the U.S., while honing a country-level strategy to gain market share abroad. "As part of a larger transformation happening around media and marketing within Adobe, this RFP represents the first time our business has truly gone to market as a global organization," Lewnes wrote in the August RFP letter. A long and thorough review Participating agencies navigated a long and thorough review process led by Adobe's Strategic Sourcing team, which the consultancy MediaLink supported as part of a larger marketing transformation engagement. “We are delighted to have been a part of the Marketing Transformation journey that Adobe began 18 months ago to re-define the media model internally and externally, enabling true full funnel strategy, global excellence and regional growth," said Michael Knopf, senior vice president at MediaLink, in a statement shared with Adweek. The global incumbent group included a few other holding companies. Dentsu managed the business in Japan while WPP managed the business in EMEA, according to a source with knowledge of the review. The brand did not name other agencies it invited to participate, although Stagwell's Assembly was one, an Adweek source close to the review confirmed. The competing agencies declined Adweek's request to comment for this story. It remains unclear which Dentsu Media agencies received the RFP or if Adobe invited Stagwell agencies other than Assembly to participate. Notably, the RFP letter lists Adobe's competitors as Canva, Salesforce, DocuSign, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and Dropbox. The Stagwell agency Gale won the Dropbox global media business in November, presenting a potential conflict of interest with Stagwell. Achieving global growth As of August, Adobe's total media business was worth $481 million. Of that, the brand dedicated roughly $185 million to spending in the Americas, $161 million to the EMEA market, $79 million to APAC and $56 million to spend in Japan. It is unclear if the brand's investment allocations changed since the letter first reached agencies last August, but Adweek's sources suggest they have. The brand manages some media in house, including parts of its Americas search business and programatic business, which according to the RFP, were not part of the review. Proving they could deliver global scale and streamlined strategy was key to the agencies' wins."Our goal is also to unlock the power of our considerable media investment by bringing together our regional and global approach into a truly global media organization," the RFP letter read. "Adobe is an incredibly connected global organization, with a strong vision for how global media fuels future growth,” Zenith CEO Lauren Hanrahan said in a statement, on behalf of Publicis. The agency search follows an internal marketing transformation that the RFP letter described as a "radical." Adobe's created a global center of excellence to ensure its regional activities coalesce with a singular global goal. The COE's core function, according to Brown, is to support regional media buying and execution teams, which will help regions grow more effectively. The brand also created a global media stakeholder team to "defend its leadership position" in the Americas and locate growth opportunities in EMEA, APAC and Japan. "Before we didn't have that practice in place, and so that was key for us before we even went to the market to find a new global agency partner," Brown told Adweek. The new integrated agency model with WPP and Publicis Media will mirror Adobe's internal model, and the agency-led COE will work closely with the brand-side iteration. Audible Consolidates $500 Million Global Media Account With Wavemaker “Initially, we were very centralized and that made sense,” Lewnes told Adweek in January. “I think we’re looking for a much more efficient, cohesive model that has a strong center, but also empowered leadership in the regions,” she said. Global cohesion means Adobe will abandon campaign-driven marketing initiatives in favor of "fewer, bigger media plans," according to the letter. The brand is still searching for a new marketing leader following Lewnes' departure. "Ann, of course, was the the impetus behind driving this change," Brown said, adding it was "the right change, and helped us think bigger."