WPP sharpens cost-cutting axe to reinvest in AI tools

WPP has finally confirmed plans to pool its creative agency brands – including VML, Ogilvy, and AKQA – to form WPP Creative in a major shake-up designed to save the business £500m a year by 2028 and boost its investment in AI.

The move is part of WPP chief executive Cindy Rose’s turnaround plan, dubbed Elevate28, aimed at simplifying the company’s structure, restoring growth, and driving long-term value through tech-enabled, integrated solutions.

Like its rivals, WPP is being forced to embrace AI and reinvent its proposition in response to huge upheaval in the market.

With more and more clients seemingly unwilling to pay for creative ideas and seeking to slash overall costs, the likes of Google and Meta are becoming classic “frenemies”. While tech giants are attracting client spend by offering services which have traditionally been the bread and butter for most agencies, including creative generation, targeting, and measurement, agencies are finding it virtually impossible not to jump further into bed with them.

In fact, WPP recently signed a five-year expansion of its partnership with Google in a deal which it claimed will “cultivate the essential skills to transform marketing as we know it”.

Rose (pictured), a former Microsoft chief, said WPP would be transformed from a sprawling holding company with hundreds of business units to an integrated organisation with four divisions: WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions.

She explained: “Our recent underperformance has been driven by excessive organisational complexity, lack of an integrated operating model and inconsistent strategic execution.

“We are acting decisively to simplify our structure, reposition WPP for sustainable growth and deliver attractive returns for our shareholders.”

WPP will also look at offloading businesses after “a complete review of our portfolio”, although it has yet to confirm which agencies will be sold.

However, agencies within WPP Creative will keep their separate brands, much like those in WPP Media, but they will share back-office functions and be encouraged to work together and pitch to clients as a single WPP team.

Rose added: “There is a lot of opportunity to eliminate duplication through operational simplification and offshoring some shared services.”

WPP said savings made through the cost-cutting programme would be reinvested in the business, with £300m a year already allotted to develop WPP Open, the agentic marketing platform designed to enable end-to-end marketing planning and execution in a secure, AI-powered workspace.

The platform integrates client, partner, and WPP data to optimise marketing investments in real-time, featuring AI agents for content creation and Open Intelligence for predictive insights

Meanwhile, WPP has once again reported steep declines in revenue, down 8.1% on a reported basis and down 3.6% on a like-for-like basis and profit for the full year, 2025 revenue was £13.55bn, , with revenue less so-called “pass-through costs” down 5.4% LFL to £10.176bn.

Full year reported operating profit margin was 2.8% and headline operating profit margin was 13.0%, representing a small decrease. Adjusted operating cash flow before working capital was £1.189bn, in line with latest guidance and year-end average adjusted net debt was £3.4bn.

However, Rose said the proposed restructure would make WPP “easier to work with and built to win”, saying that recent new business wins – including Reckitt and Henkel in Europe and the UK Government – meant the company was “firmly on the right path”.

WPP’s move comes just days after rival Omnicom revealed a major escalation of its redundancy programme, with plans to double its annual cost-saving targets to $1.5bn (£1.1bn) over the next 30 months, signalling a major period of contraction for the group.