Following a tumultous year and a change of leadership for WPP, the UK agency giant this morning unveiled its new strategy for the next three years, in efforts to simplify and integrate client proposition, restore growth, and drive long-term value for clients, talent and shareholders.
The multi-year plan, named ‘Elevate28’, aims to transform WPP’s structure from a holding company into a single business, according to the firm. The company will comprise four core operating units: WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions.
The agency group is positioning AI at the heart of this new strategy, delivering “fully integrated, AI-enabled solutions” for its clients across North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC.
“Central to this strategy is a new mission: to be the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands, helping them navigate change, capture opportunity and deliver growth, while transforming their business in a dynamic, complex environment,” the company said in the announcement.
A rigorous reallocation of resources
WPP broke down the plan into three annual phases. Phase 1 (Stabilise) will take place this year, with the aim of prioritising stabilisation of net new business performance and client retention. In 2026 the company expects continued subdued growth, while looking longer-term, the firm is targeting £500 million of annual savings by 2028, at a cost of £400 million over two years.
Phase 2 (Build) will see WPP implement “a more effective operating model” in 2027, in order to deliver a fully integrated offer spanning media, creative, production and enterprise solutions. The company is targeting a return to organic growth during the course of 2027, through “rigorous reallocation” of resources.
Phase 3 (Accelerate) is planned for 2028 and beyond, aiming to become a “simpler, lower-cost, AI-enabled business” that demonstrates accelerated growth.
“The plan focuses on stabilising the business in 2026, building momentum in 2027, and delivering accelerated, high-quality growth from 2028, supported by £500 million of gross annualised cost savings and portfolio rationalisation to unlock value,” according to the company.
The cost savings are expected to include further job cuts, following considerable redundancies last year. The company revealed that total headcount was 98,655 in December 2025, compared with 108,044 in December 2024. It is worth noting that WPP is not the only agency group planning layoffs this year; on Monday, Omnicom doubled its cost-saving target to $1.5 billion over the next 30 months, with $1 billion of these savings coming through the elimination of duplicative roles in the aftermath of its merger with IPG.
Open for business
The results follow a tough year for WPP, with revenue less pass-through costs of £10,176 million in 2025, down 10.4 percent compared with 2024 on a reported basis. The business suffered a series of significant client losses, with Mars and Coca-Cola’s US business being snapped up by Publicis. According to Mediasense data, Publicis won 1,458 pitches last year, dwarfing WPP’s 672 wins. That said, WPP did win more pitches than Omnicom, though the US group leapfrogs WPP’s client wins when combined with IPG, giving the combined entity 848 wins.
But WPP’s stock market performance has been more worrying for the business. WPP’s share price has fallen 60 percent over the past year, signalling concerns around AI’s disruption to the agency model, alongside the company’s recent performance.
Speaking on a call this morning to explain the new strategy, CEO Cindy Rose acknowledged that “recent years have been disappointing from a shareholder perspective.” Rose also highlighted feedback the firm had received from clients, who pointed to complexities in the agency stucture that ultimately harmed the group’s media business.
“We were siloed, 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,” said Rose. “It’s taken us too long to land our data proposition, and our media business has suffered as a result. The good news, from my perspective, is that all of these issues are fixable, [and] we’ve already started to do so.”
The CEO placed WPP Open, the company’s AI-powered marketing platform, at the heart of the new strategy. Last month, WPP launched Agent Hub on the platform, a curated set of “Super Agents” designed to work across client briefs. Rose said that AI disruption is not a “fleeting trend”, but an unstoppable force driving “a complete metamorphosis of the commercial ecosystem.”
“In this perpetually changing environment, clients don’t need more traditional marketing agencies,” she added. “What they need is a new playbook for growth and a trusted partner who can help them build it and operationalise it, a partner that operates as an intelligent orchestration layer across creativity, media, commerce, data and tech, who fuses technical expertise with breakthrough creative thinking into one cohesive approach to modern brand-building.”
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