Daybreak - The world's largest advertising agency made $20 billion last year. You've probably never heard of Accenture Song

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

In May, L'Oréal ended a 16-year agency relationship. The reason? Simply that a competitor was better prepared with better data and AI capabilities.This incident illustrates the shift that's happening in advertising right now. The agencies that bet on technology early are pulling ahead. The ones that are built on relationships are finding out how quickly those erode.Sitting unnoticed at the top of this reshuffled industry is Accenture Song. It's the world's largest advertising agency that doesn't really call itself one. It made 20 billion dollars last year. And it's barely visible in India. And that lack of visibility? That's by design.Tune in.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

There used to be a time where relationships were everything when it came to advertising. But that is not the case anymore. This May, L'Oreal India, the cosmetics giant, ended a 16-year partnership with WPP's Wavemaker. WPP, by the way, is a British multinational communications and advertising company. L'Oréal ended that account to hand over its 900-crow-R-R-Pee's media account to publicist groups Zenith instead. The reason in short was this. Publissus was much better prepared for the AI era. The company simply had better data and AI capabilities, capabilities that it had built through acquisitions of tech-first marketing companies like Epsilon, Sapient and Performance. Turns out,

all these acquisitions aligned far better with Lorial's growing focus on digital commerce. Now, this isn't just some public beef between two advertising giants. It shows a bigger shift in the industry as a whole. Right now, technology matters more than familiarity in marketing. Basically, it's the agencies that bet on tech early that are pulling ahead. And in this whole shift, there is one beneficiary that is less visible than its peers, Accenture Song. And turns out, that lack of visibility is by choice. Now, Song is the creative arm of the consulting and tech giant. It has worked on projects from Bajaj Chetak's website revamp

to deploying AI models from Malabar Gold's product content, catalog, branding and consumer insights. Even globally, its client list spans industries. A former managing director and chief creative officer at the company told my colleague, reporter Debanjali Biswas, that Song had worked with luxury brands like Chanel to airlines, banks and fast food chains like McDonald's. In fact, in FI25, Song made $20 billion in global revenue, making it the world's largest advertising agency. Still, it doesn't really call itself that.

Even though the function drives nearly a third of Accenture's overall revenue, it just sits next to Accenture's consulting, tech and operations business. In an email response to the Ken, Accenture believes that its recent reorganization will sharpen Song's integration further into the company. The company said that it's pivoting the entire organization around how clients actually operate and positioning itself to bring Accenture's full capabilities together. And what that means is this. Song doesn't really have to care about visibility much because it is already present in the boardroom. And that shapes how it thinks. Song's DNA itself is tech first.

It's pretty much the opposite of traditional creative-led agencies. Which means its real competitors are not advertising groups. Their firms like Deloitte Digital. Now, it might not be an apples-to-apples comparison. But that does not stop them from fighting in the same field anyway. What it boils down to is this. The battle to stay relevant anymore

isn't just between rival agencies. It's between two whole camps, the marketing companies that learned technology and the technology companies that learned how to be creative. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I am your host, Rachel Wriguez,

and every day of the week, my co-host, Nita Sharma and I will bring you one news story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 6th of July. Accentra's song's playbook is pretty simple. Do everything. Accentra told the Ken that it helps brands orchestrate the entire customer experience. From the data platforms, the talent models, the tools and processes that connect

experiences end-to-end to drive growth. Take, for example, the case of Bajajas Jatak, the company's popular two-wheeler model. Song handled its website revamp in 2020. from discovery to crafting the customer experience to the final build. The former director said that Accenture had brought in backend data from showrooms to understand footfall, real-time pricing, dealer locations and EV charging points. Song even pitched social media marketing. But Patash decided to go with a smaller agency for that instead. There is also another example, Malabar Gold.

Here, Song built. an omni-channel transformation, including a consumer website and app, plus separate apps for store associates and in-store consumer experience. The former director from Accenture explained that all these features had to sync with millions of customer records, real-time gold pricing, and the geographic price differences that are actually pin-code-specific. Even for its international clients, like premium Japanese beauty brands like Shiseido, Song sends out all the global digital campaigns, emailers and DMs from India.

All of this is what puts Song in a different pedigree altogether. It's tech first, while other agencies come with tech arms that were built on top of the creative one. Take for instance, the Japanese ad agency called Tensu, which once worked for an Indian online. auto-clined. But after finishing the data optimization and meeting the sales targets, something still felt missing. Here's what it was. De Wang Shah, the chief business officer at Densu India, explained that when Densu actually went into the car showrooms, it realized that the consumer was having conversations that the sales rep weren't exactly tuned into. You see, a buyer like you or me would care about the car's color, or it could even be something

as human as being envious about a neighbor who just bought a car and now you want that one as well. These are the kind of things that don't really show up in a spreadsheet and the salespersons who did not have any of this context were only sticking to their standard pitches. So, Denso built a system to track consumer behavior online. What campaigns consumers were responding to, what they were looking at on the website and then they put all of that together and made some reading material for the showroom staff. Then Suu's chart told us that when it comes to anything involving distinctly human behavior, an ad agency will always make the right call.

And that mindset shows up in song structure as well. In fact, India is Accenture's largest talent hub. Reportedly, 40% of its workforce is from here. But the creative team in India is roughly only, only about 500 people large, while several thousand employees sit in the tech enablement department. A lot of their talent comes from Accenture's advanced technology centers in India or ATCI, which is used by every Accenture vertical for cost-efficient delivery. This kind of a setup works well because Accenture runs a matrix structure with industry-level

verticals. This kind of a setup works well because Accenture runs a matrix structure. structure with industry-level verticals. And here's how that helps. A consultant explained to us that for an FMCG project, Accenture proposes a single unified solution that includes song. This means that there is no internal negotiation about who owns what and the whole process remains more agile.

And that's different from traditional agencies, which split into subsidiaries with separate leadership and separate P&L or profit and loss statements. For companies with split subsidiaries, the process becomes much longer. Because if, say, a deal originates from Publice's creative agency, but the client also needs e-commerce, then that specific subsidiary will have to be sent a proposal and they will evaluate if it fits into their PNL and then decide whether to take on that project or not.

On the other hand, a unified Accenture model makes it much easier to remain project-focused and tech-focused in India. And that is important, because Indian clients can be something of a financial gamble. More on this in the next segment. For the former director, the Bajaj Theta project was personal. After all, it was a decades-old, well-loved Indian brand and it connected song to the Indian masters in a way that global brands just don't.

But Indian clients come with a very specific catch. They like to bargain hard and the economics don't really help. Densu's shot told us that India's media spend as a percentage of GDP is among the lowest globally. Which is exactly why Song's Indian client focus has been kind of narrow. Global trends make up the bulk of its business. And the former director explained that it's not a game that Song wants to always get into because it's not recovering the cost of the company's employees, which is why international clients simply make better strategic sense.

Also, global clients stick around longer and contracts often stretch beyond five years. Indian clients, on the other hand, rarely offer that kind of stability and projects can typically last from as less as six months to three years long. Plus, longer contracts also translate into lower. rates. The former director told us that they tend to quote higher rates for short contracts, which of course clients themselves don't find very lucrative to invest it. Even Shah from then soon noted that clients from overseas tend to be more patient. He told us that they'll actually even sign off on a two-year plan and be okay with intermediate milestones. Indian

clients on the other hand ask things like, and I'm quoting here, if I put an hundred bucks, how much will you make in three months? Basically, their attention is skewed entirely towards immediate outcomes. Still, Accentia's song seems happy where it is. David Droga, Accenture's vice chair, has even expressed interest in expanding the creative capacity in India from 2026 onwards. In fact, we learned that hiring appears to be underway with candidates applying and seeking referrals already.

The thing is, India remains lucrative for other marketing giants as well, who have built truths here for decades. Shah told us that aside from iconic brands like Paliji, only 25 to 30% of the Indian population actually buys products based on brand name. And that number falls even further to the low single digits when that same game is applied to quick commerce. And that gap is exactly the opportunity, companies keep chasing, believing that they can invest and embed their brands into the Indian psyche

and hopefully consumption will follow. What also helpful is that legacy players also have long relationships to lean on. Connections and the familiarity between client and agent matters more when it comes to signing new deals or setting terms. A publicist manager even gave us the example of a teammate on the company's Nordstrom account who started as an association. and became director over nine years. Obviously, that kind of trust is very, very hard to replicate. But that's actually not a very hard moat either. Remember the laurel switch that we discussed at the beginning of the story?

Well, that's exactly an example of why decades-long relationships are not foolproof anymore. Stay tuned. Winning new business is not as straightforward. word as you might think. A core part of it is the pitching. For example, legacy Indian companies like Dabar and Asian Paints once worked with a single agency for years. But now, as a media strategist explained to De Banjali, brands put out proposals every two to three years with five to 10 agencies pitching on creative strength and cost. That means, the real competition is actually who can deliver quality the cheapest and fastest.

And that could actually work in Song's favor. Colvin Harris, the former CEO of JWT South Asia and one of the largest communication agencies said, and I'm quoting here, Rome was not built in a day. But Accenture's song knows what Rome looks like and it already has the clients and the global reputation. What song also benefits from is Accenture's infrastructure. It's Innovation Centre in Bangalore spans 11 floors and each floor is dedicated to a different industry with Qualcomm, finance, real estate, etc.

It also hosts three to four client visits daily, including from Boeing, J.P. Morgan Chase and Qatar National Bank. Clients pick the suite of services that they want and then the deal gets signed from there. The formal director explained that about 70% of the time technology is the hook that gets clients to sign. The design itself mostly just becomes a tag-along product. But meanwhile, smaller independent agencies have been shaking up the game. For example, firms like Chebang, talented and moonshot have won accounts from companies like Britannia, Make My Trip and Swiggy.

The media strategist also explained that independent firms are often started by someone who left a big agency and now they're just very specialized, not just offering all the socialized. not just offering all the services. And that means they are cheaper as well and are ready to meet clients with lower budgets. This whole thing also mirrors a global trend. Shah explained that while media spending is rising, revenues at the top agencies have stayed flat.

And that's mainly because boutiques and tech companies have started eating into the available pie. Still, large players like Accenture Song are partly shielded by the company, company's financial muscle. An industry source mentioned that this is because technology firms are frequently investing lags into client presentations alone and those don't always pay off. Even then though, the biggest threat may not be agencies at all.

AI is already cutting into headcount and consequently the number of billable people. For instance, Song spent months training an AI model to automate promotional material for Malabar gold. But now that the template has been built, the system generates new banners on its own, which needs much fewer designers on hand. Obviously, tech firms have an advantage here, because AI is embedded deeper into their capabilities as compared to any other traditional firm. Right now, though, the industry is finding itself caught in the crossfire between tech, creativity and AI. Song covers all three parts, and that's how. it manages to stay on top.

But its lead is shrinking. In November 2025, Omnicon, a marketing and sales company, had a merger with IPG, an advertising holding company that pushed their combined revenue to $25 billion, which is past songs. And that means, while being invisible wasn't a problem so far, it might become one more soon. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first. subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings.

A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters, and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Vargis and edited by Rajiv Sien.