Why Stagwell launched Stagwell Media - with Slavi Samardzija

This month, Stagwell announced it would transform its agency brand Assembly into Stagwell Media, a new global agency that will combine Assembly’s “performance heritage and ecosystem expertise” with an integrated model powered by Stagwell’s agentic operating system, The Machine. The move comes amid a wider trend among agency groups that has seen them consolidate agency brands and use AI to automate more and more of the media planning and buying process. Slavi Samardzija is the global chair of media and commerce at Stagwell. Before joining Stagwell last year, Samardzija also spent more than a decade as global CEO of Omnicom’s Annalect, where he spearheaded the creation of its AI-driven marketing platform, Omni. He joined host Jack Benjamin to discuss the creation of Stagwell Media, how The Machine is being used by its media practitioners, and the degree to which agency groups are building comparable AI-driven products. Highlights 3:52: The launch and positioning of Stagwell Media 16:56: Are agencies' AI platforms distinct from one another? 23:08: Could automation lead to a regression to the mean? 30:00: Opacity, margins, and principal media Related articles Stagwell transforms Assembly into global agency Stagwell Media Mark Penn: ‘We’re it in terms of a fourth alternative’ Why your media plan might look the same as everyone else’s