More About Advertising opined on the struggling WPP, remarking that the White holding company has lost talented leaders through mindless mashups, and ultimately wondering if CEO Mark Read might soon be gone.
Read has recently sought to pin the WPProblems on his former boss, Sir Martin Sorrell. Yet both White men share the blame.
Whether the issues are rooted in reckless acquisitions or moronic mergers, Read and Sorrell—in their efforts to evolve the holding company model—fueled a commoditization of talent. All White advertising agencies are generic service centers, interchangeable and comprised of replaceable drones. Plus, if a client doesn’t like anything in the corporate collection, a completely new shop can be erected.
Talented leaders have been lost? No, White executives were deemed redundant—they were modular units to be shuffled, shifted, and shat out of the system.
Just as the current CEO proved Sorrell could be swapped for another White man, Read now finds himself unnecessary, unoriginal, and unwanted. Hey, it’s just business in Adland—Frankenstein’s monster is turning on the meh scientist who created it.
WPP’s leadership issues go deeper than the holding company
By Stephen Foster
WPP CEO Mark Read is copping quite a bit of flak in adland, although not, so far, in the City it seems, for WPP’s recent disappointing Q3 results. And his rather lame statement to Campaign seeming to blame it on former boss (and now auld enemy) Sir Martin Sorrell for not doing enough to integrate the hundreds of companies he bought.
Read, as digital director on the board, and COO Andrew Scott were there most of the time too so was this all Sorrell’s fault?
When any company stumbles, and WPP has now issued two profit warnings this year, questions are asked of the leadership. But the CEO and his allies aren’t the only leaders in a big, diverse holding company.
The various brands within the business also have leaders, or should have. One of WPP’s issues is that, as it keeps busily merging agencies (supposedly to make life easier for clients) it loses leaders. They either hang about, grumbling in the wings, or depart.
Agency leaders, media as much as creative, have always been noted for their seemingly blind faith in the brand. Whatever misfortunes occur, publicly they emerge bright-eyed and bushy-tailer to vow that things can only get better – indeed are getting better. Above all they’re loyal to their brand.
Under the exacting Sorrell regime WPP had some strong leaders – as well as some who were too strong (as at JWT) but that’s another story. Shelly Lazarus at Ogilvy steered Ogilvy through WPP’s high period although her replacements were less obviously distinguished. Grey emerged as the jewel in WPP’s creative crown (not the strongest field maybe) under veteran CEO Jim Meekin and creative supremo Tor Myhren in the US and David Patton, Chris Hirst and creative Nils Leonard in EMEA and the UK.
They all left for various reasons (Myrhen to Apple, Leonard to Uncommon) with Patton, fairly newly ensconced as global CEO of Y&R, finding himself merged into VML. Which now, under founder Jon Cook, stands above the lot of course. That’s a lot of talented leaders to lose.
Mediacom’s Stephen Alan (he’s now chair of Brainlabs) built the agency into the biggest in the world but now it finds itself merged with Essence into EssenceMediacom, with Essence seemingly on top. Essence’s Christian Juhl is now CEO of all of GroupM. That’s another big call.
What’s the answer? Read says all will be revealed at an investor day in January. Does he have that long?
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