Mark Read is Still Banking on a GroupM Turnaround

Mark Read is bullish that GroupM will save WPP’s struggling fortunes. The holding company CEO spoke with ADWEEK on the heels of its Q1 earnings call on Friday (April 25), in which it reported a 5% revenue dip as it continues to struggle in China, Europe, and North America. “There's a lot to do over the year, and that's what we're focused on,” Read said. ADWEEK: You said on the earnings call this morning, you weren't happy with WPP’s results. What do you need to do to get to results that you are happy with? Mark Read: It's no secret that we have a great media business with a lot of strength that has had a tough time. GroupM has been competitive in terms of new business. With Brian coming in as CEO, we're off to a very strong start, but there's more work to do. That's where we're focused. As an industry, we are somewhat at the mercy of the markets. Brian has a really solid plan, and we'll start seeing results over the course of this year and playing into next. AW: You've been saying GroupM is the key to WPP’s turnaround, but the Coca-Cola loss in North America was a big blow. How do you get GroupM winning again? MR: In the last nine months, [the Group M team] won and expanded relationships with Heineken, it won J&J, it won Amazon. Those are three top 10 advertisers. So at its best, GroupM is extremely competitive. We just need to make sure they're on their best every day of the week. AW: Last time we spoke, you said WPP is the structure you need it to be, but now you need to show clients how you deliver value. How are you achieving that? MR: A lot of what we're doing [is] around AI and using WPP Open, both the workflow capability and the AI capability, to demonstrate how we can give clients more integrated solutions that deliver better results. We’ve been talking about the application of AI and marketing [for] some time, but the models are becoming much more powerful, the tools are much more powerful. Has anyone taken you through the platform? AW: I've seen it in use, but I've never gone through it myself. MR: I think you'd be positively impressed. Certainly, that's how clients react when they see the power of what we've built and the potential for AI being transformative in our industry. To my mind, this is not the metaverse. This is something much more fundamental. AW: You have made a lot of investments in AI and data. How is that impacting the way teams work at WPP? MR: We're starting to see more integration across disciplines. For a number of clients, we're looking at co-locating teams. They are much more integrated so they can collaborate more easily. It's enabling us to broaden the range of ideas we come back to clients with. The heaviest group of users are strategists, followed by creative people. What we built is very powerful from a creative perspective. This is not just a personalization of scope. It’s redesigning the end-to-end marketing process and optimizing that. People need to be able to generate insights and campaign ideas more quickly, to test ideas against synthetic audiences much more cheaply. It's enabling us to deliver better work for clients quicker. AW: Do you feel like you're getting enough credit for the investments you've made in AI? MR: Ultimately, what we will see is, the power comes through in our results. That's what we need to do. AW: You said that tariffs are not impacting client spending yet, and that you're not worried because you’re used to adapting to all these different crises in the world. MR: I didn't say we're not worried about it. I think we're all worried about it, but I can't take responsibility for it. We are concerned about the economic environment. It's just really too early to say exactly how this is going to impact client spending. So we're just keeping a very vigilant and watchful eye. To-date, we haven't seen an impact. AW: Do you expect an impact later this year? MR: It's very hard to tell at this point. The range of outcomes of tariffs is very broad for the business. There could be a resolution extremely quickly, or it could go the other way. We just have to wait and see what exactly unfolds. AW: WPP is a few weeks into the four-day return to office. There were some kinks in the beginning. How is that going? MR: It's going pretty much as we've expected. I know from seeing photos there have been times when there haven't been enough desks, but I think that that's a nice problem to have. I think we sorted out the initial seating trouble within the first week. When I look in the office, it feels busier. I see everyone working, collaborating, and helping their clients be successful, and I think that's great. We’re probably through the most [difficult] part of getting everything working properly, and we'll go from there. AW: Some employees have been vocally unhappy about the return. Do you think that there's a bigger morale problem at WPP? MR: I think that coming back to the office and working will be good. AW: There has been a lot of chatter going around that you might not be the CEO of WPP by Cannes. Can you respond to those rumors? MR: I'm not going to respond on the record.

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Mark Read is Still Banking on a GroupM Turnaround

The WPP CEO tells ADWEEK the media network has a 'solid plan' to deliver results this year

Alison Weissbrot

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