On the heels of Omnicom‘s US$13 billion (AU$20.1 billion) acquisition of IPG, three longstanding global agency brands–FCB and DDB–will retire. Here we take a look back at FCB’s roots, some of its most spectacular campaigns and impact on the industry.
Founded in 1973 as Lord & Thomas, it’s gone through a fair few identities, including Draft Worldwide to FCB, and two years ago celebrated its 150th anniversary. It created beloved ads for brands like Oreos and Sunkist and changed the culture around women’s sport in the UK with ‘This Girl Can’.
Omnicom will go to market with three global creative networks: BBDO, which absorbed FCB; TBWA, which subsumed Omnicom’s DDB and Interpublic’s MullenLowe; and McCann, brought over from Interpublic.
In Australia, DDB will merge with Clemenger BBDO, creating a single national agency under the Clemenger BBDO brand. In New Zealand, DDB Group Aotearoa and FCB Group Aotearoa will merge to form McCann Group NZ, a new unified creative and media agency network.
McCann Australia, an independently-owned Australian affiliate of McCann Worldwide, and its local independent partner agency HERO, will remain unaffected, B&T reported. All of Omnicom and IPG Mediabrands media agencies (OMD, PHD, Hearts & Science, UM, Initiative and MediaHub) are unaffected and remain as “distinct client-first agencies”.
The new holding company is led by John Wren as CEO and organised into seven core divisions. Creative arm Omnicom Advertising will continue to be led by current CEO and president Troy Ruhanen. The news follows DDB’s dissolution in October.
FCB embraced a mantra that it was “never finished,” but the industry will have to go on now without the agency.
The agency’s roots
FCB positions itself as “the oldest creative agency brand in the world,” with a history tracing back to 1873, when Daniel Lord opened an office in Chicago to sell advertising space.
In 1881, Lord joined Ambrose Thomas to form Lord & Thomas, which by the early 1900s was the third-largest agency in the U.S. Albert Lasker joined the agency in 1898. After Lord retired in 1904 and Thomas died in 1906, Lasker took over management of the agency, becoming sole owner of Lord & Thomas in 1912.
Lasker ran Lord & Thomas for more than three decades, working with clients and brands including American Tobacco Co. (Lucky Strike), Sunkist (named by Lasker) and Pepsodent toothpaste.
Lasker invented the morning ritual of orange juice to help sell more oranges, telling America to “Drink an orange” in an ad for Sunkist. It arose from the California Fruit Growers Exchange’s excess production of oranges; they needed a strategy to boost sales. Lasker saw the potential to transform the market for oranges. He not only increased sales but also changed the way consumers perceived and consumed oranges.
Before that, oranges were seen as a luxury rather than a morning staple. Our morning OJ is all thanks to Lasker!
Oreo’s ‘Daily Twist’
For its 100th anniversary in 2012, Oreo and FCB, along with other agencies including DraftFCB, posted an ad a day over 100 days across social media channels including Facebook and Twitter. Each day, the ad was paired with cultural commentary on a relevant current event or celebration–for instance, Elvis Week. The work was an early example of real-time social advertising.
The campaign concluded with a live finale in New York City’s Times Square where creatives produced a final ad in a glass box for the public to watch.
‘This Girl Can,’ Sport England
FCB London’s ‘This Girl Can’ for Sport England was a nationwide campaign designed to break down barriers to girls’ and women’s participation in sport and exercise. It was recognised with a Cannes Lions Grand Prix and the inaugural Glass Lion, while inspiring more than 3.2 million women to get active.
Sport England needed to find a way to close the 2m strong gender gap in regular exercise levels by getting more women active. And 10 years later, ‘This Girl Can’ remains part of society’s vernacular, driving significant behaviour change.
The campaign’s insight was built on a ‘fear of judgement’ stopping women from getting active. Its objective: to liberate women from the judgments that hold them back, by replacing their fear with a “don’t give a damn” attitude.
Starring street-cast women and taking an unfiltered approach to depicting women giving exercising a go whichever way they like, it tore up the rulebook on women’s exercise, and provided powerful, insight-led mantras for women to own.
Xbox’s ‘The Real Cost’
In 2019, FCB New York, in partnership with FDA, created ‘The Real Cost,’ a youth tobacco prevention campaign. It brought the dangers of cigarette addiction to life in an unexpectedly horrifying video game available on Xbox.
The initiative targeted youth ages 12-17 who were either open to trying cigarettes or are were already experimenting. The targeted youth regularly play video games, so to allow these teens to experience firsthand the consequences of smoking, the console game for Xbox transported players into a labyrinth from which they will try to escape, and from which only one will emerge.
The free downloadable game sought to represent a grim metaphor for addiction: a maze with seemingly no exit in sight. It saw players navigate creepy environments, from an abandoned high school to a hospital and morgue. The game ends with a message about the dangers of nicotine addiction.
Whopper Detour, Burger King
Burger King was relaunching their mobile app with order-ahead functionality, which wasn’t big news. So, to create buzz and generate downloads, FCB New York created a stunt by tapping into the burger giant’s rival. By letting fans unlock a one cent Whopper—only if they went to a McDonald’s location–it drove 1.5 million Burger King app downloads.
The campaign was covered around the world and swept awards at Cannes Lions in 2019.
FCB geofenced more than 14,000 McDonald’s across the United States so that The Whopper Detour unlocked on the app only when the customer was within a 600-foot radius of a McDonald’s. The app then guided people to the closest BK restaurant to pick up their order.
‘Caption with Intention’
In 2025, FCB unveiled a groundbreaking new caption design system that transformed how deaf and hard of hearing audiences experience film and television. Unlike traditional captions which have remained largely unchanged since the 1970s, this system uses animation, color, and variable typography to convey not just dialogue, but emotion, tone, and pacing.
Over the course of a year, FCB collaborated with the Chicago Hearing Society (CHS) and Rakish Entertainment to research, prototype, and test dozens of caption variations from iconic and critically acclaimed films. Through in-person sessions, remote feedback, and real-time design refinements, the system was built with, and for, the deaf community — addressing shortcomings like speaker attribution, synchronization, and intonation in a way that’s never been done before.
The open-source system is available for adoption by studios, production companies, and streaming platforms worldwide. It represents a major step forward in inclusive storytelling and cinematic expression.
The campaign picked up seven Cannes Lions Awards earlier this year.
FCB’s legacy on our industry is bold, showcasing the power of always being one step ahead, thinking up creative solutions to universal human problems. The best ads respect their customers, thinking how best to serve them, and having fun while doing it–FCB sure did that.
