Latest news with #WPPOpen
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
WPP CEO Mark Read to retire at challenging juncture for agency giant
This story was originally published on Marketing Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Marketing Dive newsletter. WPP CEO Mark Read will retire at the end of December after seven years at the helm of the world's largest ad-holding group, according to an announcement posted by the company's board Monday. Read will work with the board to find a successor, the executive said on his LinkedIn. He called out WPP's ongoing work around data and artificial intelligence-driven transformation while acknowledging that the current business environment is 'challenging.' Whoever takes over the CEO spot has a tall order to fill. WPP has contended with a number of painful client losses and spending pullbacks and is in the midst of significantly overhauling some of its most important assets, including WPP Media, formerly GroupM. Read took on the mantle as CEO of WPP seven years ago after the contentious departure of Martin Sorrell, an executive who, over the course of decades, shaped what was once a wire basket company into a sprawling advertising empire. As the successor to an industry titan, Read's tenure has not been short on incident, with challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic, periods of global unrest, inflation and the advent of generative AI. Announcing his departure, the agency chief touted his efforts to make AI a central piece of WPP, including through the broader implementation of the Open operating system this year. 'The progress our teams have made has been superb and when I 'demo' WPP Open to our clients they are always amazed by what it can do,' wrote Read, who spent more than 30 years at WPP in total, in his LinkedIn note. Still, WPP's performance has lagged compared to peers, dragged down by a raft of large client losses and sharper spending pullbacks in markets like China. Revenue less pass-through costs declined 2.7% on a like-for-like basis to 2.48 billion pounds, or about $3.2 billion, in Q1 2025. Discussing the quarterly results earlier this spring, Read cautioned that tariffs could further impact brands' appetites for advertising. In an attempt to turn its fortunes around, WPP has enacted some dramatic moves of late. In April, it acquired data collaboration platform InfoSum to further evolve its capabilities beyond legacy identity solutions built on technology like cookies. Earlier this month, it formally rebranded GroupM, its media investment arm, to WPP Media. The change is expected to impact 40% to 45% of the unit's workforce. Paramount, a longtime client, suddenly cut ties with the group last week amid plans for a merger with Skydance Media, Deadline reported, another blow to a business that is trying to turn a new leaf. Some of Read's policies have also proven controversial with employees, such as a four day return-to-office plan that had a haphazard rollout earlier this year. For some analysts, Read stepping down is an expected outcome after years of transformation work failed to return the group to consistent levels of growth. The announcement comes a week out from Cannes Lions, an international gathering that effectively acts as the Oscars for advertising. 'The news is unsurprising because of WPP's lackluster business and stock performance in recent years alongside the installation of a new Board Chairman at the beginning of this year,' said Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall in a note around the news. 'Presumably the delay of the transition of Board Chair role by a year was responsible for prolonging this outcome.' WPP maintains what Wieser described as a 'deep bench' of talent that could succeed Read, and may draw on outside candidates, but still needs to iron out a more concrete strategic direction. Recommended Reading GroupM becomes WPP Media as holding company prepares for future Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
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Business Standard
09-06-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
WPP CEO Mark Read steps down after 7 years amid falling share value
Mark Read will step down as CEO of WPP, the global advertising giant said on Monday, after seven years in which fierce competition, technological change and challenges in key sectors and geographies led its share price to halve. Read, who replaced founder Martin Sorrell in the top job at the Ogilvy and GroupM owner, said he had built a simpler, stronger WPP by merging agencies to provide a broader service to clients, increasingly centred on artificial intelligence. But WPP, which lost its crown as the biggest ad group to France's Publicis last year, has struggled to grow. It has been hampered by notable client losses, its greater exposure to China than rivals and the upheaval sparked by artificial intelligence, which gives clients the tools to create and manage more of their own marketing campaigns. Organic revenue declined by 1 per cent in 2024, and the outlook for 2025 remains muted, with forecasts ranging from flat growth to a 2 per cent decline. Shares, which have fallen more than 50 per cent since Read took over, hit a five-year low in April and were down 1.75 per cent by 1104 GMT. WPP appointed former Worldpay and BT boss Philip Jansen to chair its board at the beginning of the year, fuelling speculation that he may shake up management of a company with more than 100,000 staff. "Mark has played a central role in transforming the company into a world leader in modern marketing services, with deep AI, data and technology capabilities, global presence and unrivalled creative talent, setting WPP up well for longer-term success," Jansen said. Read said it was the right time to hand over to a new leader. "Our clients today rate us more highly than ever before, we now work with four of the world's five most valuable companies, and our revenues with our biggest clients have grown consistently," he said. Read will leave WPP more integrated after years of acquisitions by Sorrell, who created the world's largest ad group through buying agencies including J. Walter Thompson in 1987, Ogilvy in 1989, Young & Rubicam in 2000 and Grey in 2004. He has consolidated WPP's more than 200 brands into six core companies and WPP Open, its AI-powered marketing platform. This more focused group has won more business from its major clients, which include the likes of Ford, Google and Unilever, but it has also had some losses, notably Pfizer. It is in a four-way battle for a large part of Mars' non-creative business. WPP's EssenceMediacom has held the media planning and buying accounts since 2018. One major shareholder, who asked not be named, said Read had jettisoned world-renowned agencies, losing some clients and talent in the process. The shareholder said he expected WPP to look externally for a new CEO, and said the likelihood that the group could be broken up had increased. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
WPP CEO Mark Read to Step Down by Year-End
WPP (WPP, Financials) said Monday that CEO Mark Read will step down at the end of 2025, ending a seven-year tenure that included a major restructuring and focus on artificial intelligence. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 4 Warning Signs with WPP. Read, who succeeded founder Martin Sorrell in 2018, merged over 200 agencies into six core units and launched the AI-driven WPP Open platform. However, WPP's shares have more than halved under his leadership, with revenue growth lagging and client losses including Pfizer. Board Chair Philip Jansen, appointed in January, praised Read's efforts to modernize WPP. A successor has not been named, though investors expect the board to look externally. The company's 2025 outlook remains weak, with revenue forecast to be flat to down 2%. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Insider
09-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
The exit of ad giant WPP's CEO signals the end of Madison Avenue as we knew it
Will the last ad exec leaving Madison Avenue please turn out the lights? WPP CEO Mark Read said Monday that he plans to step down after seven years leading the advertising giant and more than 30 years at the company. He will continue as CEO until the end of the year to see through the transition to his successor, who hasn't been named. The announcement comes at a fraught crossroads for WPP and the broader advertising industry. Read's exit follows that of famed ad veteran David Droga, who said last month he plans to leave Accenture Song, the consulting giant's marketing services division, at the end of this year. Several longtime WPP execs have also parted ways with the company in recent months. Madison Avenue is grappling with upheaval as its profit centers shift from creating TV ads with catchy taglines and big branding ideas to trading media, integrating IT systems, and helping clients make sense of their customer data. The rise of artificial intelligence and its associated productivity gains also rips a hole through the traditional agency business model, where ad companies are generally compensated on the number of full-time equivalent employees devoted to an account. Add to that the threat from Big Tech giants like Meta, who want to cut out the advertising middlemen altogether using the power of their huge audiences and sophisticated ad targeting systems. Under Read, WPP has attempted to respond to these forces. In recent weeks, WPP rebranded GroupM, the division responsible for managing around $60 billion in clients' media investments, to WPP Media. The company said the streamlined media offering is powered by WPP Open, an AI-powered platform that helps its employees do market research, spin up media plans, and create assets for campaigns using generative AI. But WPP isn't fighting from a position of strength. The company's annual revenue declined last year, and WPP recently forecast another revenue drop for 2025, which it said reflected a challenging macroeconomic environment. Once the biggest advertising holding company by most measures, WPP was displaced by Publicis as the largest ad company by revenue last year. Publicis currently trades at a market capitalization of around $27 billion to WPP's $8 billion. The industry is also awaiting the creation of an even bigger ad behemoth later this year once the proposed merger of Omnicom and IPG passes regulatory approval. "The fundamental challenge is that an enormous amount of what the traditional holding companies do is commodity, and commodity can now be done using technology," said David Jones, the former CEO of the ad agency holding company Havas. Jones now leads the 10-year-old marketing and technology company The Brandtech Group, a WPP competitor. "AI is going to give the traditional holding companies their Kodak moment," Jones said. Read laid the groundwork for WPP's next era and its new CEO While Read is a WPP veteran, the 58-year-old wasn't an ad man in the traditional sense. He took a graduate job at WPP after getting an economics degree from Cambridge University in the UK. He left and became a cofounder of WebRewards, a digital coupons business he sold to the German publishing giant Bertelsmann in 2001, after the dot-com bubble burst. He rejoined WPP a year later, rising to become CEO of Wunderman, one of its digital agencies. Read took over the reins of the entire company in 2018, after the acrimonious exit of its longtime CEO Martin Sorrell, who had built the company from a seller of "wire and plastic products" — WPP — into what was the world's largest advertising group. While a fellow Brit, the similarities between Read and Sorrell largely ended there. Sorrell was famed for building WPP through a series of acquisitions, and still now at his new ad company, S4 Capital, is an archetypal "Davos Man," often seen on stage and TV offering commentary about macroeconomic issues. Read has kept a lower profile and has sought to simplify WPP's many agencies into a more uniform structure. Sorrell did "empire building," while "Read has been an empire dismantler," the independent media analyst Alex DeGroote said. Some industry analysts and insiders say this is to Read's credit. According to DeGroote's calculations, Read retired around 300 different agency brands, closed more than 800 offices, and realized around $5.1 billion for the company from disposals. WPP reduced its net debt to around $2.3 billion as of December 31 last year, down from about $3.4 billion in 2023. But the Read era of restructuring and layoffs has hit morale within the rank and file — a mood that was further soured among some WPP employees when he instituted a four-day-a-week return to office policy this year. WPP has lost key accounts from clients like Pfizer and the Coca-Cola North America media account, though it has also won business from major advertisers including Amazon and Unilever. Toward the latter part of his tenure, some industry insiders said Read would need to take a bigger swing — anything from taking the company private to making a landmark acquisition — in order to return the company to growth. Attention now turns to who might succeed Read. Industry insiders told BI that internal candidates for the role would likely include newly appointed WPP Media CEO Brian Lesser; the CEO of WPP's specialist communications agency division, Johnny Hornby; WPP's chief operating officer, Andrew Scott; WPP's chief marketing and growth officer, Laurent Ezekiel; VML CEO Jon Cook; and Ogilvy CEO Devika Bulchandani. These execs either declined to comment or didn't respond to requests for comment from BI. The search, led by the former British Telecommunications boss Philip Jansen, who became WPP's chairman in January of this year, is also considering external candidates. "I don't think it will be internal, but I don't think it will be a radical hire either — WPP does not need more restructuring," media analyst Ian Whittaker said. "I would look for executives at one of the other agency groups who are well regarded." One WPP insider told BI they expected and hoped the appointment would be made relatively quickly. "At the end of the day, we've just got to get our mojo and momentum back," this person said.
Campaign ME
09-06-2025
- Business
- Campaign ME
WPP CEO Mark Read to step down after 30 years with the company
The Board of NYSE-listed global advertising agency WPP has revealed the Chief Executive Officer Mark Read, will retire from the Board and as CEO on 31 December 2025 after more than 30 years with the company, which includes seven years as the CEO. Read has decided that the time is right for him to hand over to a new leader and the search for a successor is underway. Philip Jansen, Chair of WPP, said, 'On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Mark for his contributions not only as CEO but throughout his more than 30 years of leadership and service to the Company. During that time Mark has played a central role in transforming the Company into a world leader in modern marketing services, with deep AI, data and technology capabilities, global presence and unrivalled creative talent, setting WPP up well for longer-term success.' Jansen added, 'We are pleased that Mark will continue to lead WPP as CEO until the end of the year, remaining focused on the execution of the Company's growth strategy and supporting a smooth transition to his successor, once appointed.' As the CEO, Mark Read led the company, which employs more than 100,000 talents and creatives, servicing clients and partners around the world. Commenting on his decision to retire, Mark Read, Chief Executive Officer of WPP, said, 'It has been an immense privilege to serve as its CEO for the past seven years. When I took on this role our mission was to build a simpler, stronger business, and put structure and new energy behind our creativity and performance, powered by world-leading technology. I am proud that our teams across the business have delivered that exceptionally well. Our clients today rate us more highly than ever before, we now work with four of the world's five most valuable companies, and our revenues with our biggest clients have grown consistently.' Read added, 'Our business starts with creativity, and I was delighted for our teams that last year we were once again named Creative Company of the Year at Cannes Lions. We have also positioned WPP at the forefront of the industry with our investments in AI and, with the full launch of WPP Open this year, we are now leading the way as AI transforms marketing. We have an exceptional leadership team and a secure financial position that allows us to face the future confidently and capture the opportunities ahead.' 'After seven years in the role, and with the foundations in place for WPP's continued success, I feel it is the right time to hand over the leadership of this amazing company. I am excited to explore the next chapter in my life and can only thank all the brilliant people I have been lucky enough to work with over the last 30 years, and who have made possible the enormous progress we have achieved together. I would also like to thank Phil and the rest of the Board for their steadfast support for me and the wider executive team, and I look forward to supporting them in the transition to my successor in the coming months,' he concluded.
