British agency group WPP’s ‘Elevate28’ turnaround strategy, unveiled earlier this year, set a three-year plan to return the group to organic growth. Turnarounds don’t happen in a day, so for 2026 the priority has been stabilising the business, particularly in relation to net new business.
So while the headline figure from this morning’s Q1 earnings — a 6.7 percent decline in like-for-like net revenues — is hardly a positive, WPP executives say the wider results show the company is heading in the right direction. Account losses that occurred over the past year are continuing to bite, and even existing clients are in many cases dialling back spend. But net new business appears to be on the rise.
The company cited J.P. Morgan data which found WPP’s net new business for Q1 to be worth $0.8 billion, above Publicis ($0.7 billion) and Omnicom (-$0.1 billion). WPP also outperformed Publicis and Omnicom on J.P. Morgan’s rankings for Q4 last year.
Joanne Wilson, WPP’s chief financial officer who took the lead on this morning’s earnings call in the absence of CEO Cindy Rose, said the company expects to see the fruits of its turnaround efforts start to show up on the balance sheet in the second half of the year. Revenues from new client wins will begin to filter through across the rest of the year, and old client losses will cycle out of 2025 comparables.
Crucially, there’s plenty of new business to compete for. Following a spate of high-profile losses last year, previous CEO Mark Read has bemoaned the fact that there simply weren’t many big media pitches for WPP to compete in, meaning it had little chance to make up for these losses. That’s not the case anymore — though as one analyst on today’s call pointed out, there are a number of big defensive pitches coming up for WPP too.
WPP Media’s turnaround bears fruit
Asked on the earnings call about what’s driving WPP’s improved performance in winning new business, Wilson pointed to the transformation of its media arm WPP under CEO Brian Lesser, who returned to the group in 2024. “We have been working on improving the competitiveness and the performance of our media business since Brian joined around 18 months ago now, and we have made great progress on the competitiveness of that proposition,” said Wilson.
“Brian and the team have also been incredibly focused on building a much more effective, and a much more agile operating model. Most critically in that is our global media platform, which means that we have one way of delivering our work now across all of our markets,” she added. She also pointed to WPP Media’s data strategy, centred on its acquisition of data collaboration business InfoSum, which she said has given the group a differentiated data proposition.
WPP’s wider transformation efforts, in which it seeks to operate as a single unified business rather than a holding company, are also starting to pay off according to Wilson. As part of this effort, WPP wants to work with more clients as an integrated partner across their marketing activity, rather than simply delivering siloed media, creative, or production capabilities. Recent client wins in Jaguar Land Rover and Wendy’s reflect this model.
The group’s investment in its centralised tech offer is also expanding the ways in which WPP works with clients, enabling it to introduce more tech fees as an alternative (or complement) to its traditional time and material remuneration model.
This platform-like approach has the potential to bring WPP more into conflict with some of the tech partners it works with, as it seeks to offer similar services. Wilson was asked about this several times on the call, with analysts referencing the recent dispute between French agency group Publicis and demand-side platform The Trade Desk.
Wilson wasn’t drawn on the issue, simply commenting that WPP will continue to work with DSPs and SSPs wherever they’re most effective in delivering outcomes for clients. WPP’s head of investor relations Tom Singlehurst however did reference a recent WPP Media report which found that the open internet’s share of ad spend, where third-party DSPs and SSPs play a big role, is predicted to shrink. The implication, it seems, is that these tech partners may end up playing a smaller role in the comings years for WPP regardless of how their own unique relationships develop.
Show me the money
While the J.P. Morgan numbers are promising for WPP, they probably won’t convince sceptics. While WPP executives say the company’s turnaround strategy is starting to deliver, rivals may claim its big wins have come down to pricing in pitches. Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun has often said that organic growth, not new business league table positioning, is the best measure of how well an agency is retaining and winning new business.
On this measure though, WPP executives are agreed. Organic growth is very much the north star for the company. Initial signs suggest it’s having success in winning new business, the test will now be to see whether that translates to revenue growth.
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