Six months into its ambitious turnaround plan, WPP seems to be staunching some of the bleeding.
Like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs, an important measure of agency health, declined 2.8% in Q2 compared to 6.7% in the first quarter of the year, according to an earnings statement. WPP Media experienced the most dramatic upswing, down 2.8% in Q2 compared to an 8.3% drop in Q1. While the ambitious Elevate28 strategy is delivering some signs of progress, CEO Cindy Rose reiterated to investors during an earnings presentation that positive growth won’t likely come to fruition until “sometime during 2027.”
Recent major account wins for the network include the Estée Lauder Companies, Jaguar Land Rover, Heineken and Wendy’s. The fast-food chain handing WPP its U.S. media duties in April built on an over decade-long partnership with VML on creative and was cited as evidence that Elevate28’s more streamlined approach, which positions WPP as a “single company” rather than a fragmented holding group, is paying off.
“That’s a client choosing to consolidate with us because of the benefits of integration,” said Rose on the earnings call.
Retaining business is a mandate for WPP in the final stretch of 2026 and moving into 2027. The Ogilvy and Grey owner hopes to hold onto accounts through more data-driven performance tracking, a better unified view into clients and improved governance and client management.
Elevate28 has seen WPP anchor its marketing services behemoth around four core areas — creative, production, media and enterprise solutions — while expanding focus on WPP Open, its artificial intelligence-powered operating system. On the AI front, the group has also been deepening partnerships with technology platforms including Google, Amazon and Meta to enable more generative and agentic AI capabilities. Rose noted that AI could herald further changes to agency pricing that WPP will need to navigate.
“Like every technology platform shift in history, I think we are going to see some short-term deflationary impact on pricing as AI tooling drives productivity gains and reduces our cost to serve, our clients are going to expect us to pass those gains on to them,” Rose said in response to an analyst question on AI.
“But as we help our clients optimize their marketing investments overall, we can also help them reinvest those savings into innovation and transformation, and that represents an expansive opportunity to grow our footprint and to capture more addressable client spend through service integration and cross-sell,” she added.
Elevate28 additionally entails an effort to realize about 500 million pounds, or roughly $676 million, in annualized cost-savings through 2028. WPP plans to reinvest some of those targeted savings into higher-growth segments like media and enterprise solutions.
WPP forecasts like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs will decline in the low to mid-single digits in H2.
