WPP, suffering from client losses and revealing more red ink for 2025, will restructure into four divisions, cut more costs and staff, and sell assets.
In a plan called Elevate28, the company plans to get back to growth sometime in 2027 after GBP 500 million in cost cutting, merging back office functions, and consolidating leadership at global, regional and at market levels.
“WPP will no longer be a holding company,” said CEO Cindy Rose, who has spent six months on a plan since replacing Mark Read last year.
“We will no longer be a shopping basket full of stand-alone businesses, hundreds of stand-alone businesses.
“We're going to move to a single company model with four operating units across four regions with incentives that closely align to the overall performance of WPP.
“Being a single company with a simpler structure and common incentives are critical enablers of our strategy.
“As part of these structural changes, we'll also further simplify corporate functions, particularly in finance and people to reduce duplication, increase our use of shared services and redesign our processes, leveraging AI … capabilities.”
Rose took the reins of a company with negative growth, a weak share price and pushback from staff on a back to the office mandate.
The latest results show the advertising group, once the world’s largest, post full year 2025 revenue of £13.55 billion, down 8.1% on a reported basis and negative 3.6% like-for-like.
And the company is forecasting a weak March quarter with like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs down mid to high single digits in the first half of 2026 with an improving trajectory in the second half.
However, Australia's WPP Media business, with a string of client wins, is understood to be reporting positive revenue growth, as it has for the last five years since Aimee Buchanan took over.
Papers lodged with the results show staff levels of the global business at the end of 2025 at 99,000, down more than 8% from 108,000 the year before.
The company has identified assets to be sold but hasn't yet identified which ones.
“We're not going to name any assets or give any further guidance,” Rose said in response to questions from market analysts during a briefing.
“We've carried out a complete strategic review of our group. We've identified assets that we feel we're probably not the best owners for in the long term. We've started a formal process.”
Agency brands appear safe.
“We are not consolidating agency brands,” Rose said. “We are not sunsetting agency brands.”
The idea is to evolve from being a collection of traditional marketing agencies to being a trusted partner for growth and transformation, helping clients build modern marketing capabilities.
Rose describes the plan as “bold” and one to make WPP a simpler, more integrated company, one that's fit for the future, relentlessly focused on growth and brilliant execution.
She agrees that WPP has been disappointing in recent years from a shareholder perspective.
In her talks with clients, she was told WPP that its complexity got in the way of true client obsession.
“We were siloed,” she said, “We were hard to navigate. We haven't been intentional enough about evolving our integrated proposition to adapt to the changing needs of our clients.
“It's taken us too long to land our data proposition and our media business has suffered as a result. Now the good news from my perspective is that all of these issues are fixable.”
The buzzwords are to “simplify” the operating model, “strengthen” execution and transform go-to-market and drive a “high-performance” culture and attract and retain the world’s best talent.
The plan has three phases:
- Stabilise (2026): net new business performance, cost savings and “rationalise” the portfolio.
- Build (2027): A transformed go-to-market strategy supported by a more effective operating model, targeting a return to organic growth during 2027.
- Accelerate (2028 and beyond): A simpler, lower-cost, AI-enabled business, with accelerated growth, improved margin and strong cash conversion.
In organisational changes, global client leaders (GCLs) will be given more control.
“We're going to empower our GCLs with the authority and the resources to function as true leaders for their client portfolios, exercising strategic leadership rather than merely orchestrating a bunch of activities,” Rose said.
“This is going to include greater control over client P&Ls and the authority to make the best strategic decisions supported by streamlined internal processes designed to eliminate organisational friction and provide access to the right resource at the right time.
A new team of client solution architects will be established.
“This team will apply deep industry expertise to develop winning growth strategies for clients and then architect tailored solutions to deliver on those strategies, unifying technology, media data, all of our marketing capabilities to really drive successful execution,” she said.
“And finally, we're establishing more integrated growth operations, creating a stronger network of growth talent across WPP with a shared hunger to win. These changes will enable us to build on our current momentum, all of our recent wins as we strengthen our new business engine and champion a stronger winning mindset.”
Rose said that changing culture takes time and persistence, winning hearts and minds.
“I think winning hearts is about inspiring people with a new mission that feels fresh and relevant and clear.
“It's also about creating an environment that feels safe and inclusive, where creativity, where intelligent risk-taking is valued, where failure is treated as a path to learning and continuous improvement is celebrated.
“Now winning minds is about getting the basics right. So that's about clear communication and active listening to people, investments in learning and development.
“We've got to ensure that our people are building new capabilities with a focus on AI so they can deliver what our clients need from us.
“It's about common incentives across the company that just unlock collaboration and frictionless resource sharing."
WPP's strategic plan:
WPP's 2025 numbers:
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