Ipsos was the best of the large companies in the industry until the end of 2021. I had worked with a couple of competitors before and despite some shortcomings, especially on the operations side, Ipsos cared more about its clients and had some of the best minds in the industry. The business was very well managed during Covid and saw an impressive growth afterwards, Unfortunately the NA CEO left abruptly because he didn't get along with the Founder's wife and didn't get the global CEO role when the founder retired. Then a new NA CEO came in. That's when everything started to go south. Initially, the new NA CEO rode the wave of his predecessor but quickly showed a complete lack of understanding of the industry. His obsession with turning Ipsos into a 'SaaS company' and his lack of management and leadership skills created nothing but chaos. Competent and loyal professionals were pushed out and replaced with dozens of 'business developers' who multiplied small projects with small clients, hard to execute with no one to execute them. The senior leadership team progressively weakened and began joining a smaller, more aggressive competitor. Cost-cutting became absurd. The quality of operations went from bad to worse. Inevitably, the new NA CEO left in December 2023 to pursue 'another career opportunity,' and we are left with no leadership. Kantar has gone through a similar path with bad NA CEOs or no NA CEO at all for many years, becoming a chronically ailing business. Hopefully, Ipsos in Paris can avoid this.
