More About Advertising reported WPP plans to sell Burson, the PR behemoth created two years ago by blending Burson Cohn & Wolfe and Hill & Knowlton.
When birthing Burson in 2024, former WPP CEO Mark Read gushed, “Hill & Knowlton and BCW are two high-performing businesses with complementary strengths, shared ambitions, and many shared clients... The new agency will be the standard bearer as the most modern, strategic, technology-driven, full-service communications offer in the industry.”
Looks like Read’s words were puffery, hype, and/or bullshit.
Funny thing is, WPP could benefit from having onboard PR professionals to fabricate positive press releases now.
BCW on the block as WPP weighs exit from PR
By Stephen Foster
WPP is reportedly planning a sale of Burson, what’s left of its rambling array of PR businesses. Burson is an amalgam of BCW (Burson plus Cohn & Wolfe) and Hill & Knowlton, once the biggest in the UK.
In 2024 WPP sold a majority stake in FGS Global, its other big PR business, to private equity firm KKR which valued the financial-based firm at £1.3bn. Goldman Sach is lined up to handle any new sale.
PR let the side down in WPP’s latest accounts, revenue falling 6%. The business has changed dramatically with the rise of platforms like TikTok and Instagram and multifarious influencers taking away slices of budget. No one yet has put a price on BCW.
WPP founder and former boss Sir Martin Sorrell recently observed that PR had become rather a waste of time as a separate discipline, instead it should be seen as an aspect of advertising. WPP’s Ogilvy does, indeed, have a big PR operation. Whatever BCW makes, WPP must be hoping that any sale process reduces its debt, still hovering around the £3bn mark. Its current market value is “just” £2.69bn.
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