‘Nobody’s asking the question’: WPP’s biggest restructure in years means nothing until CMOs say it does

Which is precisely why the hard part starts now for WPP. The narrative is set. What remains to be seen is whether the group can turn it into something clients actually feel — in their day-to-day work, in their pitches, in the results they’re being asked to deliver.

Because ultimately that’s what it always comes down to. These businesses have cycled through enough names and structures to fill a rebrand graveyard — agencies, holding companies, marketing services groups, integrated growth partners — but the underlying test never changes: can they make CMOs more effective? That question has never mattered more. The best CMOs are fighting to move further upstream, closer to where capital flows and the big decisions get made. They need partners who can help them get there. Not agencies still thinking in campaign cycles.

“I think it’s appealing only if they [WPP] know what they’re doing right now. It’s not about what’s going to happen six months from now, and they’re able to become a strategic partner to their brands, to the brands that they work with,” said Courtney Brown Warren, CMO of Kickstarter. “If you can feel like an extension of our team, then I don’t think any CMO is necessarily worried about the earnings call.”

Whether WPP can be that partner is what this whole restructure ultimately hinges on. The four new divisions, the £500m in promised savings, the folding of Ogilvy, VML and AKQA under a single creative roof, the AI platform, the pivot from holding company to single company — the case has been made. Now it has to be felt.

So far the early signs are encouraging. Estée Lauder trusted WPP with $500 million of its media dollars. Tesco stuck with the group in the U.K. and central Europe, citing its tech and AI chops as key factors in the decision. Meanwhile, Jaguar Land Rover is deep in negotiations to hand the group its global creative and media account. And at least one senior marketer who had privately written off WPP’s chances of retaining their business has seen enough to reconsider. 

“Our media account will go up for review later this year and I won’t rule out WPP’s chances of keeping it,” said the marketer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Everything that’s wrong with WPP can be fixed with everything that’s right about it.”

Related Insights

Evolving Agencies

Rising demand for principal media buying underpins WPP’s turnaround plan Read More

They’ll know soon enough. That account joins a wider wave of pitches that will amount to the first real stress test for CEO Cindy Rose’s plan. The competitive context makes it harder still: Publicis has been executing this same playbook for the better part of six years and has the numbers to show for it. Omnicom, meanwhile, arrives at the table flush with the scale and data firepower that comes with absorbing IPG. For WPP, winning back momentum in new business won’t just be a test of the strategy — it’ll be a test of how much ground was lost while everyone else was moving. 

“Simplification has been a consistent ask, with many advertisers being vocal about the need for fewer silos, greater accountability and more integrated teams,” said Gerry D’Angelo, former vp of global media at P&G. “In that sense, what WPP is doing now reflects advertiser expectations. Plus, we’ve already seen Publicis and others move toward more unified operating models. The previous complexity of holding companies didn’t match the pace at which advertisers need to operate these days. Strategically, this feels aligned with what advertisers have been asking for.”

But spend enough time around WPP right now and the distance between the pitch and product becomes visible. As recently as last week, the group, represented by senior execs including Kate Rowlinson, CEO of WPP Media U.K, Victoria Appleby, U.K. CEO and WPP Media president of T&P and Nick Henthorn, InfoSum svp of U.K. and EMEA, brought two sets of consultants into its London offices to demonstrate how its AI platform might work for one of their clients.

It was a meeting that, according to one exec with knowledge of it, spent little time on the new strategic direction and more on making the technology feel tangible. To those in the room, it was a reminder that a credible plan and a felt experience are still two very different things. 

The frustrating thing is that none of this is new territory for WPP. The group has spent years investing in tech that its own operating model was arguably designed to resist. Platform tools built for collaboration sat unused because agency teams kept working in their own environments. Data strategies built for media couldn’t talk to creative. AI capabilities were sold into clients before underlying structure was ready to support them at scale. The problem was never the ambition, it was the alignment — or the lack of it. 

Publicis solved for this earlier and more ruthlessly, building its tech, data and operating model as a single system rather than a collection of connected parts. The result was a less sophisticated platform but a far more consistent client experience. WPP is now attempting something similar, only later and under considerably more financial pressure. Rose’s restructure addresses the organizational fragmentation directly. But reorganizing around is one thing. Making the tech, the data infrastructure and the commercial model all pull in the same direction — at the same time — is another. 

That is the execution risk sitting underneath everything else. The 2017 transparency scandal, the principal buying controversies, the ongoing lawsuit with a lawsuit — much of the damage done to WPP’s reputation traces back to the same combination: structures too complex to hold anyone accountable and margins too squeezed to resist filling the gap elsewhere. Those conditions don’t disappear with a new strategy. If anything, they can compound them. Agency brands get folded, teams get restructured, familiar faces disappear — and clients who thought they knew who to call wake up one morning to find the answer has changed. A simpler WPP with a healthier P&L could break that cycle. The question is whether this time it means it.

“Every organization, I believe, needs to consider to what extent they are feeding the dragon that may end up killing them when it comes to AI,” said Ebiquity CEO Ruben Schreurs, whose firm advises major advertisers on media and agency performance. “The agency holdcos, or Marketing Operating Companies as I call them, are exposed to the same risk in the mid-long term, unless they can capture and commercialize sufficient proprietary assets that serve as a sustainable competitive moat.”