Who Owns Leo Burnett?

Leo Burnett opened his agency in Chicago on August 5, 1935, in the middle of the Depression, with a bowl of apples at reception for visitors. The founding philosophy was that ads should be built around what he called the inherent drama of the product, rendered in plain, warm Midwestern language.

The agency's great invention was the advertising icon. Burnett's team created characters that outlived every campaign: the Marlboro Man in 1954 transformed a filtered cigarette into the best-selling brand in America; Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, the Pillsbury Doughboy, the Maytag Repairman, the Keebler Elves, Morris the Cat, and the Jolly Green Giant followed.

Through the 1960s and 1970s the agency grew into one of the largest in the world, winning United Airlines, McDonald's, and Philip Morris business and expanding internationally. Leo Burnett died in 1971, but his "Black Pencil" standard for creative work remained the agency's internal benchmark.

The consolidation wave of the 1990s pulled the firm into holding-company ownership. It merged operations into the Bcom3 Group structure, which Publicis Groupe then acquired in 2002 for roughly $3 billion in stock, bringing Leo Burnett under French ownership for the first time.

Inside Publicis, Leo Burnett operated as a flagship creative network with offices in dozens of markets. In January 2025, Publicis Groupe merged the network with Publicis Worldwide into a single global agency called Leo, consolidating two of its largest creative brands under one leadership and one P&L while keeping the Burnett heritage name visible in the new identity.