Publicis Groupe is skipping the CMO and pitching directly to CEOs worried about AI, according to chairman and CEO Arthur Sadoun.

The French agency group's boss laid out the shift on the company's third-quarter results call, held this morning. He framed it as a response to how clients now buy marketing services.

"We are increasingly seeing CEOs involved in what we do," Sadoun told analysts. "[We] are seeing that because CEOs are passionate about AI, and they understand that if they want to continue to lead their company, they need to understand AI."

He added: "This has to start from the top."

Why does the CEO route matter?

The mechanism is simple. Agency holding groups have historically sold through chief marketing officers. Publicis is moving the sale up the org chart because AI anxiety sits there, in the corner office, not only in the marketing suite.

Sadoun argued that C-suite AI anxieties drove client spending and new business wins for Publicis in the third quarter. In his account, the fear of falling behind on AI and shifting consumer habits has turned chief executives into active buyers of marketing services — and Publicis into a seller that meets them where the budget authority now sits.

The approach also changes how the group competes. Rather than entering traditional competitive pitches, Publicis is winning assignments through direct relationships at the top level.

What did it win?

The clearest proof point is PepsiCo. Publicis won the business without a pitch last month.

The same month, the group made the opposite call on another beverage giant. It chose to drop out of the competitive pitch for Coca-Cola's media business.

Taken together, the two moves show a deliberate strategy. Publicis is allocating effort toward deals it can close through executive relationships, and away from contested review processes.

What does this signal for the agency market?

Sadoun's comments point to a broader realignment in how holding companies sell. If CEOs, not CMOs, increasingly control decisions shaped by AI, the buying center for marketing services moves with them. Agencies that can speak to board-level concerns about AI and consumer behavior stand to shorten the sales cycle — and skip the pitch entirely.

For competitors still built around CMO-led reviews, the question the third-quarter call raises is whether the traditional pitch remains the default path to new business, or whether direct-to-CEO selling becomes the norm as AI anxiety deepens.