Amy Buchanan. Credit: WPP Media
WPP Media has knocked Omnicom off top spot in the latest COMvergence new business rankings for Australia, opening a $150 million gap between the two networks in the space of a year.
Ask CEO of WPP Media ANZ Aimee Buchanan, who joined the company five years ago, what caused it and the new business is not where she points to first.
"We've had an awesome last 12 months, but I think it's probably important to contextualise that: we've been undergoing big transformation, probably for the last five years, but we've really hit our stride, I'd say, the last three," Buchanan told AdNews.
The COMvergance numbers, and a similarly strong showing in RECMA's rankings, are the scoreboard. The work started somewhere less measurable, whether the business had the right culture to withstand the disruption now reshaping media agencies.
"Are we focused on our people, are we growing them, are we building them, are we building a culture that's truly ready for the transformation the industry's undergoing," Buchanan said.
"That moved quite quickly into a phase of building capability."
That capability build shows up across the group's structure now.
WPP Media ANZ has stood up dedicated units in commerce, run by Marc Lomas, data and technology under Tom Braybrook, influence led by Shivani Maharaj, sport and entertainment under Chris Hitchcock, and a newer experience and discovery practice under Dan Benton, built around the rise of generative engine optimisation and AI-driven search.
The influence unit traces back to the network's partnership with L'Oréal, Buchanan said, with WPP Media standing up the practice at scale around that relationship a little over 18 months ago.
Buchanan was clear that she does not read the COMvergance result as validation of a single year.
"You never win in a year. You look at any agency holding company, you build momentum and then your job is to continue to reinvent yourself to keep driving momentum," she said.
"You rarely see something spike and then decline, it builds over time."
The business has just finished five years of consecutive revenue growth, both top line and bottom line, a run Buchanan said she expects to continue this year.
The past year's growth spans new client wins and organic growth from existing accounts, Buchanan said, pointing to Amazon, Specsavers, Lion Nathan, Australian Retirement Trust, HBO Max and MG as recent additions, alongside what she described as strong retention across the client base.
Buchanan credited a chunk of that organic growth to a leadership focus on performance culture, including a coaching program built with high-performance coach Emma Murray.
WPP Media ran a six-month company-wide version of the program over the past 12 months, built around getting people into what Buchanan called "the game," following its launch at the network's WPP Media On Tour conference a year earlier.
"Getting distracted by success is never a good thing,” Buchanan said.
“Complacency is your biggest enemy in an agency, in my opinion, and I think our mojo is constant agitation, constant questioning around what's coming and where are we not doing well," Buchanan said.
"We've lost some things that were a bit devastating, but we learn as much from the things we don't win as the things we do win."
EssenceMediacom, one of three agency brands under the WPP Media ANZ umbrella alongside Wavemaker and Mindshare, had a standout year, growing 12.7% locally and picking up Australian Retirement Trust, HBO Max and Specsavers.
Buchanan pointed to chief executive Pippa Berlocher's leadership team, including chief planning officer Jack Graham, chief product officer Matt Scotton and chief strategy officer Sophie Price.
But it's the consistency across all three agency brands, run by Wavemaker's Peter Vogel, Mindshare's Maria Grivas and EssenceMediacom's Berlocher, that Buchanan said she's most proud of.
"It's quite hard to get three agencies humming and they're all doing exceptional work, they've had an exceptional last three years," Buchanan said.
Underpinning the growth is WPP Open, the network's AI-augmented technology platform, which Buchanan said the global business has invested about $600 million into over the past year.
WPP Media ANZ has recorded strong staff adoption, with more than 99,000 agents now running through the platform locally.
Buchanan borrowed an analogy she heard recently to describe how the technology is used.
"We need to stop talking about technology as a tool, because tools are quite blunt and one-dimensional, we need to start talking about it as an instrument," she said.
"They used the analogy of a guitar, give it to one person and it sounds amazing, give it to someone else and it sounds terrible."
Clients are asking more about how AI factors into agency output, Buchanan said, but she pushed back on the idea that the technology itself is what wins business.
"We don't win or lose a pitch on the technology, we win or lose a pitch on people's ability to use the technology, and we shouldn't lose sight of that," Buchanan said.
"No client says, 'I'll have the technology, don't worry about the people.'"
Across the Tasman, WPP Media's position is reversed.
Omnicom holds a stronger share of the New Zealand market, and Buchanan described the network's local strategy there as that of a challenger rather than an incumbent.
"In Australia, we'd been a leader for a long time and lost that position, it was about rebuilding capability and culture to drive back to a leadership position," she said.
"In New Zealand, we're a challenger, it's about building to disrupt the market and I think we've still got more work to do, but we're excited by that."
The New Zealand team has retained Specsavers, Nestlé and Unilever locally and picked up HBO Max and IKEA, the latter shortlisted for several Beacon Awards.
For a CEO who has just posted the network's strongest new business result against its biggest rival in years, Buchanan was blunt about what she doesn't chase.
"Market share's not a KPI for me at all, to be really transparent," she said.
"What I think these results indicate, and the result I care more about, is the quality of ranking rather than the size ranking."
The metrics she does track are retention, client satisfaction and staff engagement, treating commercial growth as the outcome of getting those right rather than the target itself.
Looking ahead, Buchanan said the biggest risk to the network's momentum is not competitive but internal: losing focus amid the pace of technological, social and market disruption across the industry.
"There are a million things you could do, but probably only a couple of things that are going to shift the needle. Maintaining focus and clarity is where I spend my time and energy," she said.
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