WPP's Consolidation Push Wins Over Clients as Decline Slows

WPP appears to be stabilizing after implementing its aggressive restructuring initiative. The holding group's like-for-like revenue excluding pass-through costs fell 2.8% in the second quarter, a marked improvement from the 6.7% decline recorded in Q1, according to financial disclosures. The media division showed the strongest recovery, contracting 2.8% in Q2 versus an 8.3% drop in the prior quarter.

Chief Executive Cindy Rose attributed recent client wins to the Elevate28 strategy, which repositions WPP as a single integrated entity rather than a fragmented collection of independent agencies. Wendy's decision to consolidate its U.S. media business with WPP in April exemplified this shift, building on a partnership spanning more than a decade with VML on creative work. Other major account acquisitions include the Estée Lauder Companies, Jaguar Land Rover and Heineken.

That's a client choosing to consolidate with us because of the benefits of integration

Cindy Rose

Rose cautioned investors that sustained growth remains distant, likely arriving "sometime during 2027." The company plans to defend its existing business through enhanced data analytics, unified client visibility and strengthened account management practices.

Elevate28 Framework and Cost Reduction

The turnaround strategy concentrates WPP's operations around four pillars: creative, production, media and enterprise solutions. The initiative also prioritizes WPP Open, an artificial intelligence-powered operating system, alongside deepening technology partnerships with Google, Amazon and Meta to expand generative and agentic AI capabilities.

The restructuring targets approximately 500 million pounds, or roughly $676 million, in annual cost savings by 2028. WPP intends to redirect a portion of these savings into faster-growing segments including media and enterprise solutions.

AI's Impact on Pricing and Service Models

Rose acknowledged that artificial intelligence will reshape how agencies price their services. She explained that productivity improvements from AI tools will create near-term pressure on pricing as clients anticipate cost reductions.

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

Cindy Rose

However, Rose suggested that WPP can offset margin pressure by helping clients reinvest savings into marketing innovation and transformation. This approach could unlock opportunities to expand service offerings and capture additional client spending through integration and cross-selling.

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

Cindy Rose

WPP projects like-for-like revenue excluding pass-through costs will decline in the low to mid-single digits during the second half of the year.