On Saturday The Telegraph reported that Global had pulled DOOH ads for PR agency WeAreSPQR that criticised holding companies.
The copy — which did not reference any holdcos by name but made jibes about AI and redundancies at ‘big agency groups’ — had initially been approved by Global, and the campaign was about three-quarters of the way through its flight when SPQR was told that the posters would no longer be shown.
Mike Coppen-Gardner, the CEO of SPQR, tells MediaCat that he received an email from Global, saying that the company’s senior leadership had requested the campaign be pulled because it was too personal and negative.
Essentially, says Coppen-Gardner, Global was admitting that it didn’t want to upset its biggest customers.
Punchy ads sometimes get pulled by OOH media owners, especially when they’re punching at high-profile or sensitive figures and organisations. But the only other example I can find of outdoor owners refusing ads to protect their commercial relationships is the 2025 activist campaign by Bite Back, which wanted to put up billboards criticising junk food ads.
Henry Makiwa, who is the organisation’s head of digital and comms, told MediaCat that it never got an explanation for why JCDecaux and Global refused the ads, and it’s possible that they were denied for being implicitly critical of the media owners themselves (for allowing junk food brands to advertise).
So, I’m minded to believe Coppen-Gardner when he says that he did not anticipate Global pulling the agency’s ads, which he says were intended as a recruitment campaign to pick up any senior-but-underappreciated talent that was thinking about leaving the shrinking holding companies.
‘We were expecting more of a response from the holding companies, to be honest’ he adds.
But even if the campaign was a calculated stunt on the part of SPQR, the reaction of Global would have legitimised it, making it one of those stunts where the inherent stuntiness becomes an asset because it demonstrates the intended targets’ sensitivity. These are the best kind of stunt, if you ask me.
The effect of Global’s actions, writes Coppen-Gardner in an op-ed for MediaCat, ‘was to suppress a legitimate point of view in a public medium, on behalf of the companies that point of view was examining.’
I don’t know that I share the same concerns about freedom of speech when it’s applied to corporate actors and ad space. And even Coppen-Gardner admits that Global was within its rights (and it’s Ts&Cs) to do what it did. I suspect the spikey nature of ads prevents it from being a true issue of competition, too.
But it’s not a great look for the holding companies (even if they had nothing to do with the decision) or Global, either.
Global, WPP and Publicis were approached for comment.