Mark Read and Rob Reilly on WPP's Creative Reputation and Its AI Offering

WPP landed top honors across Cannes, winning Creative Company of the Year, while Ogilvy won Network of the Year and client Coca-Cola snagged Creative Brand of the Year. Before learning of those distinctions, CEO Mark Read and global chief creative officer Rob Reilly sat down with ADWEEK to discuss several topics, including its creative offering and the state of AI at the holding company, which earlier this year reported its revenues increased 3% in 2023 and projected 2024 to be relatively stagnant. "WPP strengths come from the quality of the relations we have with clients, our talent and GroupM, the market leading media company, globally," Read told ADWEEK. "We have a significant program of investing in AI across the organization, and also the simplification process of VML is underway. All of those things position us very well for the next six months and longer term. In any transition in any organization, there are bumps along the way." While GroupM remains the largest holding company media practice by market share in terms of global billings, it has had many high-profile account losses, including Mindshare's losses of Kimberly-Clark and General Mills, while EssenceMediacom lost Uber. Currently, GroupM agencies are defending their Unilever and eBay accounts, which are in review. One of the key bright spots for WPP has been Ogilvy, which grew 3 to 4% last year, according to previous comments by Read. The creative shop was ADWEEK's Global Agency of the Year after a combination of standout creative and impressive new business records. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. ADWEEK: Given the strategic investment in high-profile creative talent at Ogilvy and the praise you've had for it, explain WPP's view on the creative side of the business as some of the other holding companies haven't seen the same kind of growth?Read: The creative parts of the business are critical. If we do great work, it will attract better clients and ones that want good work. WPP has integrated analog and digital. We've built integrated, ideas-driven creative agencies. The work takes advantage of all the changes in technology, from AI to influence to ecommerce. These businesses are winning in multiple categories at Cannes and that reflects the diversity of output. They're not stuck in an analog silos. Reilly: I joined three years ago for very specific reasons. Mark said, "I want to be the most creative company in the world." Having a CEO who has that, albeit grandiose, ambition is amazing. I'm very interested in all the things that we have to offer, including the media. Every holding company comes to holding company-level pitches with a different value proposition and emphasis on certain parts of the business. What does WPP think about your proposition?Read: We want to be ideas lead, very integrated and very well balanced, which means balanced between creative, media production, public relations and all the disciplines clients need. We're very well-balanced geographically, we have the breadth and scale around the world to help. Rob, as you know, your former colleague Chris Beresford-Hill recognized it's a tough business for a young creative to grow in right now and wanted to improve that while he was at Ogilvy. What is WPP doing to make the company a great place for a creative to learn?Reilly: You have to be accessible [as a leader]. And part of it is our people have to want to come into the office, too. When you're not in the office, you're not meeting as many people and you're not maybe listening to many things. I used to just listen to Alex Bogusky at the wall, even on assignments I wasn't on. We have to do a better job of being available for younger people. That's the most important thing for us—how do we create an environment where people feel they can learn just by being there? When looking at AI, are your clients starting to draw a line where to use it? For instance, your client Dove said it will not use generative AI to represent human beings.Reilly: They aren't having that conversation with me yet. What's been removed from our businesses, is the time and money to experiment and fail. So AI and AR tools and other tools that are out there make experimentation and failure done quickly. So many great ideas are not necessarily created by AI, but they're born with some of the inputs and some of the insights we gather from it. So I see it as an incredible tool, just like the computer was for digital photography. Many of the holding companies have made significant investments in AI. What is WPP's biggest selling point on AI today?Read: What we're trying to do is embed AI in the way we work today. We've got 40,000 people using our platform. We're using it creatively in our media business, our production business and WPP Open, in addition to really concentrating all of our technology behind that in a much more integrated fashion, and that's going to make that platform more powerful and smarter over time. Where are the barriers?Read: AI is on the cusp of being ready for prime time. It's as much a glimpse into the future, as it is ready to produce images. But maybe to your point, we're not confident that we have the copyright to use the images or the images aren't quite right. The technology is advancing 10x every two years. The models we have today are going to be 100 times more powerful in four years. Are you able to measure any of the savings you've gained from the efficiencies of AI?Read: AI is much more about enhancing our capability than saving money. It's much more about improving the quality of work that's produced and the volume of the work that's produced. It's very much actually about driving more ROI for clients than saving money.

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Mark Read and Rob Reilly on WPP's Creative Reputation and Its AI Offering

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