Advertising Scenario Planning, Digital Taxes and Pharma Tariffs, Havas' Results and More
Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary for April 12, 2025
Will you be in Cannes for the Lions? Are you returning via Paris? If so, on Sunday June 22 (the Sunday following the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity) we will be organizing another “chocolate marathon,” a nearly 26-mile path around Paris, France over the course of the day. To see a past route and get a sense of what it looks like, visit www.chocolatemarathon.com. If you would like to join in for some or all of the day please reach out and let us know.
Each week on the M&W Podcast, we discuss Madison & Wall’s latest research. On this week's podcast, our Advertising 101 series continues with a focus on outdoor and out-of-home advertising with Keith "Kappy" Kaplan, an advisor, investor and industry executive - including as global CEO of WPP's out-of-home buying division, Kinetic.
This follows the past seven weeks where we explored the role of agencies (Ep. 23 with Macquarie Securities' Tim Nollen, the function of global account leads (Ep. 24 with Heartmore's Carl Hartman), media agencies (Ep. 25 with Boston University professor Janna Greenberg), media planning (Ep. 26 with Scott Wensman), media research (Ep. 27 with Stacey Schulman), national TV and CTV buying (Ep. 28 with Todd Gordon) and local TV (Ep. 29 with Janice Finkel-Greene). Our first six parts focused on marketers and how they allocate resources (you can listen to these interviews on episodes 17-22 of The M&W podcast).
You can also hear more about our work on agencies through the Agency Business podcast, a collaboration with FusionFront Media’s Olivia Morley. This week’s episode is with FutureBrand's Simon Hill who talks about their brand-led consultancy and design agency, how FutureBrand competes with both management consultancies and independent shops, why brand experience has become a priority for clients navigating commoditized categories, and how the firm thinks about talent, offshoring, and cross-border collaboration.
Weekly Work
We looked at the consequences of specific tariffs on the pharmaceutical industry, whose product is primarily imported into the United States.
We reviewed the consequences in the EU of a retaliatory tax on digital advertising on US-based companies, including digital platforms, ad tech companies and agencies.
We summarized perspectives on the current environment provided by CEOs and CFOs from marketers including Levi’s CarMax, Walmart and Uniqlo’s parent company
We reviewed Havas’ most recent quarterly results, which indicated expectations essentially in line with our thinking about agencies this year
We published an interview with Mutinex’ Henry Innis that took a deeper dive into marketing mix models
More Context
In our scenario planning note, we reviewed possible outcomes for the economy and the consequences of those scenarios on the advertising economy this year. As our base case, we maintain our existing forecast for US advertising growth of 3.6% excluding political activity.
Although our forecasts since December have presumed a no or low-growth underlying environment paired with elevated levels of inflation, we re-emphasize that our forecast is measured in nominal terms, and thus accounts for the possibility of a GDP decline paired with even higher rates of inflation.
With the “shock” of the end of globalization as we have known it in the United States at least, a range of worse outcomes remain very plausible for the year ahead, with few likely upside surprises relative to our expectations.