WPP, while not the first agency holding company, in many ways established the modern industry model through a relentless approach to acquisition. Now, the owner of agencies like VML and Ogilvy wants to unwind the complexity created in the wake of that aggressive expansion, vying to become a “single company” that can put sophistication in areas like artificial intelligence first.
WPP is already a single company by many conventional definitions. It trades under one stock ticker — with a share price that continues to trend downward — and has an executive leadership team with one CEO, Cindy Rose, at the helm. But it’s hard not to read the Elevate28 strategic overhaul, announced as part of a trading update on Feb. 26, as another nail in the coffin for a legacy agency ecosystem that has been limping along for at least a decade, battered by the industry’s sluggish adjustment to technological transformation and changing client demands.
“Clients pointed to the fact that our complexity got in the way of true client obsession. We were siloed. We were hard to navigate,” said Rose on the Q4 earnings call earlier this week. “It’s taken us too long to land our data proposition and our media business has suffered as a result.”
The shift to anchoring WPP’s business around four units — creative, production, media and enterprise solutions — and a single shared operating system, WPP Open, mirrors the approach taken by rivals like Publicis Groupe, which over time have prioritized service areas over individual agencies. Some industry watchers see WPP’s move as savvy, although it arrives at a time of great financial pressure, with the group’s measure of organic revenue dropping 6.9% in Q4 2025, and with further declines expected for the first half of 2026.
“[T]here will undoubtedly prove to be significant benefits from this change, which is unquestionably the right direction for WPP and every globally-oriented agency group looking to service global marketers with scaled marketing-related services,” wrote Brian Wieser, principal at Madison and Wall, in a Substack post about the news. “As has been evident to us since at least the mid-2010s when Publicis, Dentsu and Havas shifted towards such a model, clients care little about individual agency brands, and conflicts can be managed without the separate silos that follow from maintenance of separate businesses.”
Impact on employees
WPP’s Elevate28 strategy also promises to change ways of working at the network. A heavy emphasis is placed on AI, inclusive of supporting more “high-velocity” production. In addition, WPP is implementing a new talent framework intended to foster a “high-performance culture.”
Rose took care to note that WPP does not plan to sunset or merge individual agency brands, but it will consolidate global, regional and market leadership while employee objectives and incentives will be more closely tied to client results and the overall success of the business.
“We’ve got to ensure that our people are building new capabilities with a focus on AI so they can deliver what our clients need from us,” said Rose on the earnings call. “It’s about common incentives across the company that just unlock collaboration and frictionless resource sharing.”
The strategy also aims to realize 500 million pounds, or roughly $677 million, in annualized cost savings that can be redirected into high-growth areas. Other agency networks are enacting similar plans, with a focus on steep labor cost reductions, providing a morale blow to a category already roiled by uncertainty and job cuts. While WPP did not detail any specific figures for layoffs, some of the makeup of the agency could look different in the near future.
“In a business where most of our cost savings are people, that will mean a reduction of certain heads, but we will be reinvesting back into talent, different types of talent — commerce talent, influencer talent, much more analytics talent,” said WPP CFO Joanne Wilson on the earnings call.
