As widely reported, the Roserrection of WPP—Elevate 28—was hatched in consultative collaboration with McKinsey & Company.
The partnership represents a fundamental failing for WPP: that is, a White holding company boasting capabilities for delivering world-class strategies, concepts, and executions to enhance brands’ businesses is incapable of providing such services to itself.
It’s a classic “Physician, heal thyself” scenario.
What makes this mess extra disturbing is highlighted in a recent Harvard Business Review interview with McKinsey & Company Global Managing Partner Bob Sternfels.
Sternfels’ statements from the HBR interview include:
· “We’re coming around to the conviction that we’re migrating away from pure advisory work, away from a fee-for-service model. We’re moving to more of an outcomes-based model, where we identify a joint business case with our clients, and we underwrite the outcome by tying our fees to the impact our work delivers for them.”
· “Beyond that, I hope we complete the journey from being an adviser to being an impact partner.”
Regarding the outcomes-based pay scheme being explored by the White holding company, WPP CEO Cindy Rose said, “By shifting our revenue profile from being unpredictable and episodic to being much higher quality, recurring revenue that can be linked directly to the outcomes we deliver for our clients. … A commercial model that is more closely linked to client outcomes will enable us, over time, to move away from time and materials.”
Declaring WPP is no longer a White holding company, Rose said, “We’re a single operating company, and our mission is changing. We want to be a trusted growth partner for our clients in the era of AI.”
In short, it looks like McKinsey & Company took its own PowerPoint vision template and replaced M&C with WPP. Plus, the consultancy supplemented the half-assed effort by instructing Rose to copy other global holding companies’ tactics.
Hopefully, McKinsey & Company does not have an outcomes-based pay arrangement in this case. Otherwise, they might have to give WPP a significant refund.
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