When a patient has been in the hospital for six quarters, even a modest uptick in vital signs is cause for cautious optimism among the attending physicians. The same might be said for WPP's media business, which returned to growth for the first time since early 2023, a stretch during which the holding company watched competitors celebrate account wins while it explained to investors why this quarter would be different from the last.
Cindy Rose, who has been steering WPP's media operations, greeted the news with the kind of measured enthusiasm that suggests she has been in the industry long enough to know that one good quarter does not make a trend. "I'm not claiming victory yet," Ms. Rose said, in what might be the most British sentence uttered on Madison Avenue this year.
The turnaround was fueled in part by new business from Coca-Cola and DoorDash, two accounts that represent rather different ends of the American beverage-and-sustenance spectrum but share a common need for the kind of media planning that can justify the fees holding companies have been defending for years.
More intriguing, perhaps, was Ms. Rose's suggestion that artificial intelligence agents — the automated systems that can now perform tasks once requiring human hands and human salaries — might help improve profit margins. (One imagines the staffing implications were left to the imagination of those listening.)
WPP, which under Sir Martin Sorrell became the largest of the advertising holding companies before his departure in 2018, has spent the subsequent years adjusting to a world in which being biggest no longer guarantees being most profitable.
Whether the media unit's return to growth represents a genuine recovery or merely a pause in the descent remains to be seen. Ms. Rose, at least, seems to know which way she is betting.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Cindy Rose on Why She’s ‘Not Claiming Victory Yet’ and How AI Agents Could Boost Margins"