The Brief – Tuesday 2 December – Omnicom axes agencies and jobs, new industry awards, ChatGPT launches shopping tool and more

Welcome to The Media Leader’s daily round-up of media news you might have missed and need to know.

🔴 Omnicom is to axe historic ad agencies and to cut 4,000 jobs in IPG takeover, with John Wren, CEO, stating cost savings will surpass previous estimates. (Financial Times)

🏆 Tina Fegent and Jeff Cobb have launched a new independent Marketing Procurement Awards scheme. It focuses on and celebrates best practice and unsung contributions of marketing procurement marketing and teams. Entries will be accepted between 1 December 2025 and 6 February 2026. (Marketing Procurement Awards)

⁉️ ChatGPT-5 is offering dangerous and unhelpful advice to people experiencing mental health crises, according to some of the UK’s leading psychologists. Through research, conducted by King’s College London and the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK, the chatbot failed to identify and challenge delusional beliefs. (The Guardian)

🚺 Kantar’s Christmas ad results revealed the proportion of all adverts in 2025 showing women in non-traditional roles has halved vs last year to only 4%. (Kantar)

📹 The Guardian has launched Today in Focus: The Latest, a new 10 minute video and audio podcast designed to bring audiences up to speed on the day’s most important news. (The Guardian)

🛍️ OpenAI is rolling out a new-AI powered shopping tool, Shopping Research, in ChatGPT which researches products online, reads reviews and compares options based on the user’s specific requirements. (Digiday)

🔷 JCDecaux UK is working in partnership with NatWest to help early-stage businesses scale and grow through OOH advertising. Startups and scaleups within the NatWest Accelerator community will gain access to JCDecaux’s Nurture Programme. (JCDecaux)