Stagwell Closes the Largest Deal in Its History with ServiceNow
Stagwell has signed a three-year partnership with ServiceNow — the holding's largest multi-agency deal. The client's media budget, according to COMvergence, stands at 120 million dollars.
The American holding company Stagwell and the enterprise AI platform ServiceNow have signed a three-year strategic partnership — the largest multi-agency deal in Stagwell's history. According to COMvergence, ServiceNow's media budget stands at 120 million dollars.
Stagwell CEO Mark Penn called the agreement "a partnership where both sides win." A boilerplate phrase. The substance of the deal, however, remains unchanged by it.
What Does the Contract Involve?
The agreement unfolds along two tracks.
- Stagwell is implementing ServiceNow's AI platform (software for automating enterprise processes) across its entire structure.
- The holding's agency group becomes ServiceNow's leading partners in the market. The list includes Code and Theory, 72andSunny, Allison Worldwide and Movers+Shakers.
The partners' task is joint work on go-to-market initiatives — that is, bringing products to market: the agencies will, in the release's wording, "create, launch and measure marketing campaigns" for the platform.
Why Does ServiceNow Need Agencies?
ServiceNow is a California-based company that develops cloud solutions for automating enterprise workflows. Its 120-million-dollar marketing budget is a serious prize for any holding company. For Stagwell, the sum is distributed across four agencies, making the deal structure considerably broader than a typical media leadership pitch.
Mark Penn presented the contract as a continuation of Stagwell's series of technology alliances. Earlier, the holding struck partnerships with Adobe and Palantir (a developer of big data analytics platforms). The logic is obvious: the advertising holding sells itself to technology clients not only as a campaign executor but also as a user of their products.
The scheme is symmetrical. ServiceNow gets agency infrastructure and marketing expertise. Stagwell gets the contract, flagship partner status and — more importantly — a position inside the enterprise software ecosystem.
What Does This Change for the Market?
For the advertising industry, the deal is another signal of consolidating relationships between holding companies and major technology clients. The classic pitch, where agencies compete for a client, is giving way to a long-term alliance: the client simultaneously becomes a technology supplier to the agency itself.
For Stagwell's competitors — WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic and others — the news means that one of the notable technology budgets has been allocated for the next three years. They won't be coming back to this client in the foreseeable future. For ServiceNow, whose business is built on scaling enterprise deployments, betting on a multi-agency model instead of a single agency looks pragmatic: different tasks — from creative to PR — get different executors under a single umbrella.
The precedent is telling. Technology companies increasingly run marketing as an infrastructure project rather than a series of campaigns. Stagwell turned out to be among those who embraced this logic earlier than others.
Author: Artem Pasechnik
Source: Adweek
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