Publicis organic growth slipped in the third quarter to 2% as budget cuts triggered by sluggish economies in Europe stalled strong summer revenues.
North America, Publicis’ largest market, ticked up 3.2% over Q3 2011 to 805M euro ($1B), below expectations, while overall the Paris—based advertising, PR and marketing conglomerate saw revenue of 1.6B ($2.1B) euro.
Organic growth of 2% was below earlier expectations.
Chairman and CEO Maurice Levy called it a “summer of contrasts” where July and August trended upward until a sudden downturn in September – “as sharp was it was unexpected” – centered on Europe.
“September bore the full brunt of budget cuts triggered by the marked downturn in economies: instead of the 6.6% growth forecast for September, the month ended with negative growth of -1.6%, mainly as a result of Europe.
Levy said North America remains “resilient” and believes the factors that hurt revenue in Q3 – loss of GM’s media and search account, as well as cuts to healthcare and retail budgets – are “more non-recurrent than structural.”
The first slide of Levy’s investor presentation for the Q3 results included a collage of headlines about economic troubles in Europe, the U.S. and China.
Big wins for MSLGroup included Wal-Mart (Hong Kong) and Taitra (Taiwan).