IPG Statement on Withdrawn Shareholder Resolution

A shareholder advocacy group submitted a proposal to be voted on at our 2023 annual meeting calling for a report on the potential use by law enforcement of data collected by Acxiom against women seeking to exercise their reproductive rights.

Given the sensitivity of the proposal and our commitment to ensuring equal access to reproductive choice for all our employees, we reached out to the proponent to discuss the issues and concerns raised by them in the proposal.

Over the course of our discussions, we applauded the intent of their mission-driven proposal and covered with the proponent the practices at Acxiom. We confirmed that we do not have access to any data that is connected with a woman’s reproductive choices and that we do not possess any data that would be useful for law enforcement to subpoena or use against anyone exercising their reproductive rights.

The shareholder advocacy group, upon learning of our practices, withdrew its proposal in a timely manner.

Neither IPG nor our subsidiary Acxiom collects personally identifiable information that could be used by law enforcement for abortion-related prosecutions. In particular, we do not collect personally identifiable information (e.g., geolocation data, internet activity data, commercial transaction history data, or inferential data) related to reproductive health. It’s important to note, this was the case before the shareholder proposal.

Specifically:

1. We do not collect information that can be used to locate or track an individual’s movements between locations.
2. We do not collect information that may be used to identify an individual’s specific transaction or purchase information at a granular level, such as an individual’s purchase of any reproductive health-related items.
3. We do not collect data related to sensitive geographic locations such as medical clinics, hospitals, abortion clinics, schools or places of worship.

IPG and Acxiom have consistently been proponents of an ethical approach to the use of data in business, as well as privacy by design in all of the work and solutions we do with our clients. That commitment to a higher standard has been a differentiator for us in the marketplace.

We continuously review and reconfirm that these practices ensure the privacy of individuals, particularly in light of the Dobbs decision.