17539: WPP CPO WTF.

More About Advertising reported on impending layoffs at WPP, spotlighting the new WPP Media Chief People Officer, who will likely be among key players executing the latest RIF.

 

The content closed by asking: Is there a People job in [Adland] that doesn’t really mean less people?

 

That’s a good question, prompting a Google search to define the C-suite function. According to M&A Executive Search, CPO responsibilities include:

 

• Shaping organizational culture and employee experience

 

• Developing DE&I (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) programs

 

• Creating leadership development initiatives

 

• Driving employee engagement strategies

 

• Aligning the workforce with the company vision and values

 

• Building talent acquisition competitive advantages

 

• Fostering a sense of purpose and belonging

 

Okay, except no way can a new CPO shape organizational culture and employee experience at a global flaming dumpster that is burning out of control.

 

DEIBA+ programs have already been abandoned.

 

Leadership development cannot commence until after dealing with honcho redundancies, resignations, and restructurings.

 

Employee engagement strategies likely involve mandated rah-rah events.

 

Expressing the company vision and values won’t happen before WPP CEO Cindy Rose hatches and articulates the grand scheme. For now, it’s chirping crickets.

 

Talent acquisition competitive advantages are trumped by talent termination.

 

Sense of purpose and belonging? Nonsense of purpose and belonging would be a more appropriate term.

 

In short, given WPP’s current death-spiraling direction, the CPO role could be handled via AI—or eliminated entirely.

 

WPP sets sail for another round of job cuts

 

By Stephen Foster

 

WPP is reportedly embarking on another round of job cuts and newly-hired chief people officer at WPP Media Darren Minshall looks as though he’s been hired to lead the charge. Or maybe retreat. WPP Media employs about 40,000 people.

 

Like all such execs Minshall [above], who’s worked at numerous companies including, back in the day, Havas and MullenLowe, says the right things including “AI isn’t the hard part. Leading people through it is” and “AI should improve work, not blindly replace it” which may reassure some WPP Media folk although the embattled holding company, first under Mark Read and now under Cindy Rose, has made no secret that it sees AI as the secret sauce to put it back on the road to growth.

 

So will Minshall be the grim reaper, on the lines of George Clooney in the movie Up in the Air, where he plays corporate downsizer Ryan Bingham or someone to bring a little balance to the seemingly AI-obsessed holding company?

 

WPP is now divided into creative, media, production and commerce and most people expect its creative agencies to bear the brunt of tech-driven changes. When JWT, Y&R and Wunderman were lumped together with VML it was said to be the biggest creative agency in the world with about 30,000 people. WPP also has Ogilvy of course, which seems to be staying above the fray.

 

But the old GroupM media operation comprising EssenceMediacom, Mindshare and Wavemaker was pretty substantial and numerous too and, although its fortunes have recovered to a degree, it has still to return to winning ways for the world’s really big media accounts, most of which are at Publicis with some others at Omnicom.

 

Is there a People job in adland that doesn’t really mean less people?

17534: FYI ICYMI IPA BS.

More About Advertising spotlighted a survey from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) showing clients want White advertising agencies to “stretch, grow, and challenge” them.

 

Yeah, right. Regardless of anything the collected data might claim, here’s a clear interpretation of the client requests based on reality:

 

STRETCH insufficient budgets

 

GROW timelines via scope creep

 

CHALLENGE assumptions and briefs—but execute to assumptions and briefs anyway

 

Clients want agencies to ‘stretch, grow and challenge’ them says IPA

 

By Emma Hall

 

The IPA has got some advice for agencies about what clients value from agencies, and it doesn’t seem to be a “core creative idea,” which was joint 10^th on the list with 73% saying it’s important. AI, however, is right at the top, with 90% of marketers saying AI skills are either critical or very important in both creative and media agencies.

 

Out of 200 clients surveyed, 83% want “stretch and growth thinking,” but only 48% think agencies are delivering it. There was also a gap between the clients who wanted to have their briefs and assumptions challenged (77%) and the 43% who said their agencies dare to do this.

 

What else are marketers looking for? These clients were not admitting to prioritising faster and cheaper; instead say they want strategic expertise (80%), quality production (83%) and specialist knowledge of key channels (79%). Conversely the growth of in-housing is, they said, about cost, speed, control and integration.

 

When it comes to remuneration, agencies will be pleased to hear that two thirds of clients think they are undervaluing themselves. The top preferred alternative (at 54%) is an outcome-based model – one that agencies have long been calling for but find it hard to put into practice. Clients (82%) also want agencies to help them “get the customer heard at board level” which is quite an ask.

 

The study (with Tracksuit) surveyed clients in charge of marketing budgets of between £1m and £250m. There are five recommendations for agencies:

 

1. Create better stories to reframe agency value

 

2. Promote the power of creative expertise

 

3. Package and promote critical thinking

 

4. Influence board level decision making

 

5. Orientate the agency and refocus remuneration around that value

 

Marcos Angelides, chair of the IPA commercial leadership group and Publicis Media’s MD of L’Oréal Lab & head of AI, said: “Clients want agencies to push their thinking further, challenge assumptions and bring new perspectives to the table. To do that effectively, agencies need to combine creativity and expertise with robust data and insight that guarantees competitive advantage.”

 

Ed Palmer, IPA director of value, says: “Agencies should take heart in the value marketers attach to the creativity, challenge and strategic rigour that agencies are uniquely placed to deliver. But there’s work to be done to ensure that agencies deliver what clients truly value in them, and that that value is recognised and compensated accordingly.”

17531: On Solving WPP Enterprise Solutions.

 

More About Advertising wondered about WPP Enterprise Solutions, a unit in the global flaming dumpster, newly launched with self-promotional hype full of technobabble and straight-up bullshit.

 

Much of the pitch appears to be lifted from recent Harvard Business Review articles. Is it AI-generated content or blatant plagiarism?

 

Clients should avoid seeking solutions from an enterprise seemingly incapable of solving its own problems—or clearly articulating its offerings, benefits, and value in original style.

 

That’s Advertising 101. Ask anyone at WPP White advertising agency Ogilvy, named Network of the Year at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

 

Just saying.

 

WPP launches Enterprise Solutions – in Nerdish

 

By MAA Staff

 

WPP is launching its new Enterprise Solutions suite, one of the pillars of Cindy Rose’s new WPP. At least that’s what we think it is. One thing we’re learning about techies is that they protect their cult with a private language which only they understand and which excludes most of us.

 

This is what Enterprise Solutions does (is the nomenclature like water solutions for plumbers?)

 

AI Transformation Consulting – Helping organisations realise AI value through strategic advisory, architecture and agentic systems.

Agentic Commerce – Converting brand equity and product truth into machine-readable signals that shape how AI agents discover, evaluate and recommend brands.

Owned Intelligence – Converting client-owned data into strategic, AI-ready competitive assets that fuel brand-specific and commercially-attributable results.

Adaptive, Real-time Relationships – Pairing first-party data with AI to anticipate and personalise every interaction, deepening loyalty and growing lifetime value.

Intelligent Content – A closed-loop operating system that plans, produces and activates content using intelligent automation.

 

Does anyone know what, if anything this means? Translator please.

17529: On Trust, Distrust, And Mistrust At WPP.

More About Advertising spotlighted troubles at WPP Media, including:

 

• The former head of WPP’s media operation in China received a life imprisonment sentence for charges stemming from a $176 million scam—and two others were also hit with stiff sentences.

 

• The former head of a GroupM division in New York City filed a ‘whistleblower’ lawsuit, charging he was fired for raising red flags that WPP’s trading division illegally retained profits that should have been passed back to clients.

 

Additionally, there’s a class-action lawsuit filed by shareholders charging WPP with deceptively sugarcoating profits last year.

 

It all makes for bad optics, especially given the single White operating company is restructuring itself as a media-first enterprise.

 

WPP CEO Cindy Rose declared, “We want to be a trusted growth partner for our clients in the era of AI.”

 

The corporate website proclaims, “WPP Is The Trusted Growth Partner For The World’s Leading Brands.”

 

Okay, except WPP displays internal distrust. Media is globally viewed with suspicion and concern by clients. And Adland practitioners are consistently rated among the least-trusted professionals.

 

Trust is earned. So is distrust and mistrust.

 

WPP’s China crisis – why is the holding company so accident-prone?

 

By Stephen Foster

 

Any business handling millions, sometimes billions, of other people’s money on ultra-tight margins is open to fraud, indeed it may be tempted to try itself.

 

The former boss of WPP’s media operation (GroupM) in China has been sentenced to life imprisonment, accused of masterminding a $176m scam. Two others have also received stiff sentences. The Chinese judicial system is hardly famed for its transparency but WPP has been careful to distance itself from the three employees. Its business in China, hardly a surprise, has been hammered.

 

That isn’t the only cloud on the horizon though. Over in NYC there’s what’s being termed a $100m ‘whistleblower’ lawsuit from Richard Foster, one-time head of GroupM’s Motion Content Group (whatever that was) alleging that WPP fired him for raising concerns that WPP’s trading division used client spending power to secure cash rebates and volume-based discounts from media owners, illegally retaining profits rather than passing them back to clients. Ring a bell?

 

Also in NYC, there’s a class action by angry shareholders claiming the company failed to appraise them fully of the collapse in profits last summer which, ultimately, led to the departure of CEO Mark Read. Making overly-optimistic noises can be costly.

 

Finally (and there may of course be more) WPP is involved in a long-running dispute in Kenya with the founder and former CEO of WPP Scangroup Bharat Thakrar alleging that WPP, among other things, has been using Scangroup money to prop up the holding company, to the detriment of Scangroup. It’s redolent of other far-flung WPP disputes including its agencies in Australia.

 

Now WPP may deal with all these issues and emerge smelling of roses but they surely affect its ability to trade its way out of current problems. They must be especially galling for all those people at Ogilvy and VML who have just notched up a stellar Cannes Lions, seemingly doing a great job for their clients despite all the noise (and worse) around them.

 

WPP’s biggest problem – in a competitive field – is debt, around £3bn against a total company value of £2.64bn. New CEO Cindy Rose’s first job is to reverse these positions. But it’s hard to see what else she can sell to do it. It’s already sold out of research (Kantar) and PR (FGS Global) without making much of a dent in the debt. That in itself is something of a puzzle.

 

Then there’s what we might politely called proprietary media trading (or broking), the smokey activity behind many of the above issues, including China where media deals seem to have been carved up in a Shanghai poker game. Almost certainly more such cases will emerge, partly because no-one seems to know whether it’s legal or not. The US courts may help us out.

 

This Cannes Lions should be a turning point for WPP. But there’s still a lot of old baggage lurking in the undergrowth.

17522: WPP CEO Delivers Award-Winning BS.

 

More About Advertising spotlighted WPP at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, reporting VML and Ogilvy—White advertising agencies within the global flaming dumpster—scored significant recognition and trophies.

 

MAA reckoned WPP would have earned a Creative Company of the Year/Holding Company of the Year threepeat if the dubious award hadn’t been nixed.

 

The hoopla prompted WPP CEO Cindy Rose to uncharacteristically comment on creativity, including the following bullshit:

 

“Creativity is our superpower—it’s what builds brand differentiation and trust for our clients. WPP is home to the world’s most iconic agency brands, and this year at Cannes Lions that showed: two creative networks in the top three, the number one PR agency, the most awarded media group for a second year, and so much exceptional work that came from our creative, media, production, and PR agencies working together.

 

“This is our integrated model in action, delivering growth for clients. I couldn’t be prouder of our talented people across the world, and I want to give a massive thank you to our extraordinary clients who partner with us to deliver brave, ambitious work.”

 

Interesting that Rose gushed about PR, as reports indicate the entire practice might be pruned from the worldwide network.

 

To declare, “WPP is home to the world’s most iconic agency brands…” constitutes propagandistic puffery at its finest. Hell, many of the most iconic agency brands were erased over the years by the White holding company—before it changed to a single White operating company.

 

Finally, to say, “This is our integrated model in action…” is revisionist rhetoric. The awarded work was produced before Rose arrived, far preceding the Roserrection integrated model—which, incidentally, looks like a Hindenburg being built in fire-filled flight.

 

If Cannes presented a Lion for CEO bullshit, Rose would be a serious contender—although she’d have tough competition from all others leading holding companies.

 

It’s WPP top again at Cannes

 

By Stephen Foster

 

Last year WPP won Creative Company of the Year at Cannes Lions – and the organisers promptly retired the award as it seemed to reflect entries as much as anything else and, anyway, the wheels were clearly coming off WPP. It was just about CEO Mark Read’s last public appearance in the role.

 

It [would] have won this year too had there been such an award with Ogilvy winning network of the year with 81 Lions including three Grand Prix. Publicis’ Le Pub was agency of the year, WPP’s VML also scoring strongly while Rethink Toronto was independent agency of the year and Heineken creative brand of brand of the year.

 

Britain’s Mother won the Film grand Prix, still the highlight of the festival for many, for Anthropic’s Claude.

 

Ogilvy CCO Liz Taylor says: “We come to Cannes with one goal in mind: to proudly take the stage each night with our clients and celebrate the power of creativity in every corner of the world. To affirm their belief in ideas to solve any problem, overcome any challenge, and drive the impact they aspire to create.

 

“I am incredibly proud of Ogilvy’s performance this week, but more than anything, I’m proud of how we continue to show up for and with the biggest and boldest brands. To shape culture, inspire communities, reimagine entire categories, and to chart the future that we’re all, always, stepping into.”

 

WPP CEO Cindy Rose says: “Creativity is our superpower – it’s what builds brand differentiation and trust for our clients. WPP is home to the world’s most iconic agency brands, and this year at Cannes Lions that showed: two creative networks in the top three, the number one PR agency, the most awarded media group for a second year, and so much exceptional work that came from our creative, media, production and PR agencies working together.

 

“This is our integrated model in action, delivering growth for clients. I couldn’t be prouder of our talented people across the world, and I want to give a massive thank you to our extraordinary clients who partner with us to deliver brave, ambitious work.”

 

Should have earned a few more years of quasi-independence for the big two creative brands anyway. VML, a mash-up of JWT, Y&R and Wunderman, has done remarkably well.

17505: More On WPP And Publicis Groupe Battling Over Coca-Cola.

 

More About Advertising opined on The Coca-Cola Company launching a media, data, and technology review that will pit WPP against Publicis Groupe.

 

MAA rightly points out the review is focused on media, data, and technology business currently with WPP.

 

The North America media business with Publicis Groupe is not in review.

 

Plus, WPP is apparently not at risk of losing global creative and PR business—even though the White holding company sought to prune PR from its portfolio.

 

Is Publicis Groupe sneakily seeking to incrementally acquire the entire Coke business?

 

Is WPP desperately seeking to retain business with delusional hopes of someday regaining the North America media business from Publicis Groupe?

 

And what’s the real thing’s real objective?

 

MAA argued back in the day, White advertising agencies wouldn’t tolerate such shenanigans from clients.

 

Okay, but back in the day, the Cola Wars were waged with breakthrough creative executions that struck emotional chords to seize market share.

 

Now the worldwide battles aim to control media, data, and technology—although the collateral damages and casualties are civilians.

 

Pitch-prone Coca-Cola reviews business still at WPP

 

By Stephen Foster

 

Winning all of Coca-Cola’s agency marketing business was one of the few good things to happen to WPP during the end of CEO Mark Read’s reign — but what a business it is to mind.

 

WPP started off winning everything but [then] lost North America media to Publicis, probably the most profitable part. Now Coke, which seems painfully addicted to reviews, is holding a shoot-out twixt WPP and Publicis for its media, data and technology everywhere except North America (don’t they want to upset Publicis’ Arthur Sadoun?), Japan and Korea where it works with Dentsu. Creative doesn’t seem to included officially although it’s hard to see how it can [be] left out with all this going on.

 

The ostensible reason for the review, to be handled by Mediasense, is to create a “digital-first marketing operating system for future growth. This includes a shift in mindset from traditional media planning to the emerging ways we need to reach consumers through technology, including agentic tools.” Which might mean anything, or nothing.

 

One has to feel for newish WPP CEO Cindy Rose and her team who can probably envisage a future in which all they do is repitch for chunks of Coca-Cola.

 

Back in the day a big, confident agency would have shown a client, even one as big as Coca-Cola, the door over these shenanigans. The same thought may have occurred to Publicis CEO Sadoun unless he’s pretty sure it’s all coming his way. Coke’s use of “agentic” may be a clue.

17494: Why Cannes Lions Is A Lyin’ Loser.

More About Advertising reported Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity dumped the Holding Company of the Year/Creative Company of the Year trophy.

 

In nixing the dubious honor, Cannes Liars finally admitted it represented a scam award—a recognition exclusively reserved for White holding companies.

 

Plus, the Omnicom acquisition of IPG—along with WPP repositioning itself as a single White operating company—further complicated the exclusivity and scammy nature.

 

Given all the holding/operating companies are becoming media-first or AI-focused enterprises, it didn’t even make sense to call it the Creative Company of the Year award.

 

Expect Cannes to recoup any losses and maintain its outrageous profits by introducing new trophy categories.

 

The only true creativity with Cannes Lions involves its craftiness for maximizing and monetizing opportunities targeting an ever-award-hungry Adland.

 

Cannes cans Creative Company of the Year

 

By Stephen Foster

 

Cannes Lions has moved to update one of the dafter elements of its annual jamboree, “retiring” (a newly-popular word in adland as elsewhere) its Creative Company of the Year award. This simply seems to have rewarded the ad holding company that made the most shortlists — that is, had the most entries — last year going to WPP.

 

Which looked rather odd because just as then CEO Mark Read and the troops were celebrating this on stage it must have been evident to even the most rosé-soaked client that the wheels were coming off the British-owned holding company in all directions.

 

With Omnicom buying IPG the number of contenders has reduced anyway (Publicis, which ditched Cannes entries entirely one year to save a reported €50m) doesn’t seem to take the event as seriously as its US and UK rivals.

 

In line with this are changes to Network of the Year, presumably now a replacement for Creative Company of the Year. This too has had its issues, Omnicom’s DDB winning last year even though it had to withdraw three ads for cheating. DDB has now joined the list of retirees — folded into TBWA — suggesting the connection between supposed creative excellence and commercial performance isn’t as direct as many (including the Cannes organisers) suggest.

 

Cannes Lions says: “By introducing a cap on shortlist contribution, reinforcing the importance of quality over quantity through adjusted weighting, and ensuring consistent judging practices, our aim is to provide a refreshed benchmark that reflects today’s creative landscape — grounded in credibility, integrity and excellence.”

 

That would be nice.

17480: Examining WPP (Woman’s Payment Plan & Worldwide Persistent Problems).

 

More About Advertising published a perspective examining issues associated with the WPP CEO Cindy Rose pay scheme recently approved by 75% of shareholders—despite rejection recommendations from two advisory groups.

 

For starters, the approval is technically not approved, as WPP is legally obligated to connect with dissenting shareholders and report collected feedback within six months.

 

Six months from now essentially marks Year One of the Roserrection, so her success or failure in meeting the arguably impossible incentives will be reality.

 

It all underscores the messiness of transitioning from a White holding company to a single White operating company—a restructuring never publicly defined with clarity or transparency.

 

If Eviscerate28 has been officially documented, it’s in pencil—or invisible ink—as the vote on Rose’s payment indicates even shareholders aren’t overwhelmingly convinced the flaming dumpster can be transformed.

 

There continues to be sloppiness as the proceedings unfold, displaying a “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach. This is unconscionable, given over 98,000 livelihoods are at risk, and leadership is readily firing aimlessly.

 

For drones and C-suite executives, RIFs must feel like covert military operations, devastating sneak attacks executed with minimal regard for collateral damages.

 

In Rose’s defense, she’s facing a basic challenge: change always changes. At the same time, to change and to change for the better are two different things.

 

Omar Oakes: Why one in four WPP shareholders aren’t convinced

 

The case for giving Cindy Rose a pay raise — rejected by a quarter of WPP shareholders — matters because of the divisions we now see within and between ad agency holding groups.

 

By Omar Oakes

 

What happened to the once mighty ad agencies of Madison Avenue and Soho, whose great creative and strategic minds used to make or break businesses?

 

Are agencies becoming increasingly minor characters because advertising is no longer a game of big ideas and spectacle, but a small, shabby game of following people around the internet with surveillance tactics and popups? Or do they deserve more blame for failing to make the case that the power of creativity has never been more necessary in a world of rising misinformation and automated mediocrity?

 

Whatever your view of agencies in 2026, there is likely a common reflex when reading stories from the past week about WPP and Publicis Groupe CEOs receiving substantial increases in their pay. My eyebrows twitched, but each to their own.

 

But in the case of WPP, not all shareholders did agree. In fact, one in four said no to WPP CEO Cindy Rose’s proposed pay increase, from a maximum package of £8.6m to £11.1m per year. Everything else sailed through the company’s AGM last Friday, including Rose herself being “re-elected” at 99.63%, which is a number that even Vladimir Putin might blanche at.

 

But seriously folks, this story matters a lot more than ‘rich company boss gets richer’. Let me explain.

 

WPP’s CEO pay: what’s really a fair comparison?

 

To understand why one in four matters, you need to know about the 80% rule. Under the UK Corporate Governance Code, if a pay resolution at a public company AGM fails to reach 80% approval, the board is legally required to engage with dissenting shareholders and report back within six months. Both WPP pay resolutions fell below that threshold (Resolution 3, the compensation committee report, at 75.84%; Resolution 4, the forward pay policy, at 74.92%).

 

So let’s see what WPP report back with in six months. But why go through this headache in the first place for company whose share price is so historically low that last year it fell out of the FTSE 100?

 

The first reason is peer comparison. In its latest annual report, WPP felt it necessary to publish the historic pay packages of its rivals to show how frugal it had been. John Wren at Omnicom earned $21.7m (£15.9m) in 2024 and Sadoun was, even before his own pay rise was revealed last week, earning a “theoretical” maximum of £10m. You don’t close the gap, the thinking goes, by having a CEO who only makes a piffling £8.6m!

 

The second reason is even more awkward: WPP’s boss was apparently being paid so pitifully that she was outearned by about a third of WPP’s executive committee! The traditional pyramid of pay, where the CEO is top dog and tranches below get paid progressively less, had broken down.

 

The third reason is perhaps the most difficult to swallow: CEOs like Cindy Rose are not just paid for past performance, their pay is intended to send a signal and an incentive for future improved performance. The ‘shareholder big bet’ was shown in its most extreme form last year by Tesla, which gave Elon Musk a near-$1tn pay package. Musk’s pay was structured entirely around milestones not yet hit, designed to keep the most important person in the building focused and retained.

 

The WPP board is making a smaller version of the same argument: Rose can earn £11.1m if she hits her targets, we believe she will, and here is the structure to make that happen.

 

You can’t imagine there being a similar rebellion over at Publicis Groupe, if it had the same shareholder voting rules. Chairman and CEO Arthur received a 20% salary increase, taking his potential package to €10.5m. But it’s a non-story because Publicis has posted 20 consecutive quarters of growth and, before Omnicom fattened itself by gobbling up IPG, had outmuscled WPP to become the world’s biggest advertising services group. In 2025, Publicis Media won more than $10bn in new business, according to Comvergence data, while WPP Media lost more than $2bn net. Yes, it has since won $1.9bn in Q1 of this year, but these are not comparable businesses at this moment in time.

 

In other words, Sadoun is being retained for performance already delivered, but Rose is being incentivised for performance not yet achieved.

 

Money is fiction. Value is reality

 

In recent years, Publicis built its data, technology and e-commerce capabilities over years of deliberate acquisition. Meanwhile, WPP, under Read, was painstakingly trying to simplify its hodgepodge of agencies, bespoke client teams, and integrated verticals, following years of aggressive acquisitions under Sir Martin Sorrell.

 

As for how WPP turns around under Rose now, last week’s profile interview by the excellent Suzanne Vranjica of the Wall Street Journal had some revealing lines. Such as:

 

“Rose said that once WPP returns to organic revenue growth, which she expects in 2027, it will allocate more funds to dealmaking and bolster such areas as commerce and social-influencer marketing.”

 

2027? Another seven months (at best!) feels like a long time to wait to start catching up. Especially since most new money in this industry is flowing directly to Meta, Google and Amazon via small and medium sized businesses who buy direct without agencies (including on verticals such as ecommerce and social media/influencer!)

 

As for internal “pay compression”, the timing of this argument isn’t great. WPP’s revenue fell 6.7% like-for-like in Q1. As Mark Ritson’s uncharacteristically dry, sober and unsweary Adweek article pointed out, WPP’s headline operating margin compressed 200 basis points in a single year, from 15% to 13%. And the company’s share price is down by about 30% since Rose took over in September.

 

While she received zero financial performance bonus (because she didn’t earn it), she did, however, receive her maximum bonus for non-financial metrics. The board gave her full marks for the softer stuff in a year the numbers went the wrong way. That is, as far as I can tell, the thing that 25% of shareholders were voting against.

 

The forward signal argument is the most interesting to unpick, because it isn’t wrong in principle. But a bet like this requires a credible forward path.

 

The risk of putting more ‘skin in the game’

 

If, as Rose hopes, WPP returns to organic growth next year, the market will be even more consolidated, more expensive to enter, and more densely populated by competitors who moved earlier. That makes it more likely that the board is pricing in a recovery that is, optimistically, a 2028 or 2029 story.

 

Will shareholders continue to have the same level of patience for that long?

 

There is one aspect to this supposed turnaround story that doesn’t give me confidence. For all the talk of transformation and innovation, this is still a business which, you know, needs to bring in more money than it spends. Business experts call this “profit”.

 

The danger is that WPP becomes so desperate to portray a winning turnaround story (to prop up the share price) that it continues to play the same, self-defeating game which has plagued all large agency groups for decades now: race-to-the bottom pricing.

 

Because WPP is winning accounts: the UK government media account, Reckitt, Estée Lauder, Jaguar… but if revenue keeps falling, it’s the signature of a company defending market share by cutting prices. Then every account that is won on those worse terms resets the floor for the next pitch.

 

This was bizarrely framed in the same WSJ interview: during a recent pitch for a healthcare company, Rose cut the agency’s fee, tying compensation to performance targets. Greg Paull of R3 (now part of MediaSense) was quoted describing this as WPP “putting skin in the game,” adding that this had not been a hallmark of the holding group. He meant it as a compliment.

 

Strange. Firstly, because fee-cutting to win business is not a new strategy at WPP, from everything that I’ve heard in over a decade of my covering this industry, no matter the CEO.

 

Secondly, the decline of fees relative to scope of work by big agencies has been a defining characteristic of this industry for decades. You can read Michael Farmer’s books and Substack to understand, with ample evidence and explanation, how the holding company model was always propped up by a cross-subsidy: undercharge on creative, recover the margin on media buying and production markup.

 

But now the same pressure is hitting media, as platforms commoditise buying and clients demand transparency on every pound spent. So the cross-subsidy is collapsing from both ends. Where left is there to claw the margin back from?

 

To quote Ritson: “The only question that matters is whether clients will pay more.”

 

That is the problem the WPP turnaround has to solve, and Rose’s brainchild scheme Elevate28, to make £676m in cost savings, is a margin defence operation that buys time. Meanwhile, ever weaker pricing erodes the top line.

 

Again, how much patience are these shareholders really expected to have?

 

See you in six months

 

If only politics were the same: a winning politician is forced to consult with the people who voted against them. Because they represent all the people, not just their supporters, right?

 

So it’s a very good thing that UK corporate law requires WPP to engage with dissenting shareholders when votes fall below 80% approval and report back in six months. Corporate behaviour might be even better if the actual workers were entitled to representation on boards, as they are in Germany, but that’s for a different column.

 

For now, this story matters because it really will signal whether there is much hope for the holding company model to survive. Is this a board that updates its view of WPP’s position in light of new meaningful evidence or another round of investor relations management that concludes with minor adjustments and a press release about constructive dialogue?

 

I suspect the data will answer that question before the board does.