Edgar’s SEC Data profile {Actuarial Version}Coca-Cola →
From the chopped neck
Coca-Cola is reviewing its North American media account after Publicis Groupe won PepsiCo's global media business and chose not to defend the Coke mandate. The account encompasses media planning and buying across the United States and Canada, with combined annual spend estimated at $4 billion based on Kantar data for 2024. Publicis held the business since 2009 through Starcom.
Three networks are in active discussions: Omnicom, Dentsu, and WPP. The review covers only North America; Publicis retains Coca-Cola's media work in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific under separate contractual arrangements. Industry protocol prevents agencies from holding competing accounts in the same category within a single market, forcing the incumbent to abandon one or the other. Publicis selected Pepsi. The decision reflects a $7 billion global commitment from PepsiCo announced in December 2024, a contract value that exceeds Coca-Cola's North American spend by 75 percent.
The review matters because it shifts bargaining leverage inside the three remaining networks. Omnicom and Dentsu both service Coca-Cola in other markets—Omnicom through OMD in certain Asia-Pacific territories, Dentsu through Carat in select European markets—but neither holds the flagship North American mandate. WPP lost PepsiCo's media business to Publicis in 2020 and has publicly prioritized carbonated-beverage clients as a vertical growth target in its 2025 investor presentations. The winner inherits a portfolio that includes Coca-Cola Classic, Sprite, Fanta, Dasani, and smartwater, with media allocations weighted toward digital video at 42 percent of total spend, linear television at 31 percent, and social platforms at 18 percent as of Q4 2024. The account does not include creative, which remains with WPP's OpenX since 2021.
Second-order effects are already visible. WPP's GroupM unit has reportedly assigned a dedicated task force to the pitch, pulling senior talent from Mindshare and Wavemaker to build a unified offering. Dentsu is expected to propose a Carat-led model with performance analytics handled by Merkle, mirroring the structure it uses for Toyota. Omnicom's OMD has not publicly commented but is understood to be preparing a decentralized approach that keeps planning and activation within regional offices rather than centralizing command in New York.
Operators should watch for the official review timeline in March 2025, with agency presentations likely in May and a decision before July. The winner will need to stand up a dedicated North American hub by January 2026, when Publicis's contract expires. Coca-Cola has not announced whether it will consolidate all media functions under one network or split duties between two finalists, a structure it has used in the past for creative and activation. The company spent $4.2 billion on measured media globally in 2024, down 6 percent year-over-year as it shifted dollars toward retail media networks and owned-channel content.
Publicis's departure after fifteen years ends the longest continuous media relationship in Coca-Cola's post-2000 agency roster. The company has changed media partners eight times since 1990, more frequently than Procter & Gamble (four times) and Unilever (six times) in the same period. The next agency will inherit a brand whose North American volume declined 2 percent in 2024 while its media efficiency improved 11 percent, according to the company's February earnings call. That efficiency gain came from programmatic buying improvements Publicis implemented in 2023. The successor will need to maintain that trajectory while navigating increased regulatory scrutiny of data targeting in both the United States and Canada, where new privacy legislation takes effect in September 2025.
The takeaway
Publicis chose Pepsi's **$7B** global business over Coke's **$4B** North American mandate—now Omnicom, Dentsu, and WPP compete for the latter before July.
Editorial & Disclosure Notice: This article was written with artificial intelligence from public sources and is published without individual human review. Artificial intelligence and other digital tools are also used for research, analysis, editing, formatting, and production. Errors, omissions, outdated information, or inaccuracies may occur. References to companies, brands, products, services, organizations, or individuals are for informational and editorial purposes and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, affiliation, partnership, or approval unless expressly stated. All trademarks and other intellectual property remain the property of their respective owners. Opinions, analysis, estimates, and commentary are informational only and should not be construed as financial, investment, legal, tax, medical, procurement, or other professional advice. Information may be corrected, clarified, or updated after publication. Corrections or removal requests: jenny@pops4.com.
Want the 60-second program for your specific event?
Enter your event and email — we build it and send the branded proposal before lunch. No obligation.
The branded-identity layer Chiefs of Staff and heritage CMOs route through — your name imprinted on real authorized stock, your pick of 200+ brands and 70,000 products, shipped from one accountable house. Nine editorial desks publish the intelligence those operators read before they sign.
200+authorized brands
70,000products · virtual proof on each
9 deskspublishing daily
1997one house, since
70,000 SKUs · virtual proof in 60 seconds · no platform fee · blind-shipped · ASI #217876
Your next customer won't visit your website. Their AI will.
AI assistants have quietly taken over the first step of buying — they answer from catalogs they can read and shortlist whoever can actually ship. Two questions now decide whether you exist to that buyer: can a machine read your catalog, and can you fulfill the order. Most brands fail one or both and never find out why the orders went elsewhere. The winners of this shift aren't the loudest. They're the most readable. Build for the machine that's about to do the shopping.
Built by the craft floor — apparel, media, packaging, and secure print.
This trade runs on hands, not desks. Imprint manufacturing & Komori heritage press through approved vendors · Canon high-speed secure-media operations is a craft floor — genuine Six Sigma discipline applied to ink, thread, foil, and registration, where a hundredth of an inch is the difference between a brand that reads serious and one that reads cheap. POPS4 is built by exactly those operators: independent, boots-on-the-ground engineers who carry their own book, read a client in microseconds, and put their name on every run. Beyond our own Virginia Beach floor, we work with a vetted network of craft manufacturers across the US — each meeting the highest excellence in QC standards in the industry, each a specialist in its own discipline — so apparel, hard-goods imprinting, media manufacturing, packaging, and secure printing all go to the bench built for them, coordinated from one accountable hub. Short-run from twenty-five units, volume to five hundred thousand. Two hundred authorized national brands, seventy thousand SKUs with virtual proofing on every one. Art archived for instant reorders. Net-thirty corporate terms, NDA-standard white-label — your name on the work, or none at all.
Strategy, positioning, identity, creative, and messaging — wired into an AI system that publishes and distributes on its own. Nine editorial desks generate the authority, the production house ships the physical proof, and the attribution layer tells you which post sold which SKU. What you get is an operating layer — content, catalog, and order path under one roof — that keeps working whether or not you are in the room. Built for principals who would rather own the machine than rent the agency.
Named-account programs — one desk, quiet delivery, NDA-standard.
One point of contact who already knows the file, so nothing restarts from zero between engagements. The work ships blind, under NDA, with your name on it or none at all. Built for single-family offices, heritage-house CMOs, sports-ownership groups, and the agencies that white-label our production. The relationship is the product; the merch is the proof of it.
SFO · Chief of Staff desk. Principal household, properties, aircraft, yacht, calendar, philanthropy — one file.
Shop seventy thousand products. Virtual proof on every one. 24/7.
Drop your logo on any product and see the virtual proof before asking. Quote routes direct to the desk. MCP catalog for AI agents. Celeste for the fast conversation. Full self-service checkout in development.