WPP reorganises around AI

WPP is redrawing its org chart in India while redrawing the company itself everywhere else. In the past two months, it has grouped its business into four units — WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions — and India is now figuring out who actually controls the creative profit and loss account inside that new map. (wpp.com) (storyboard18.com) That sounds like admin work, but it changes who gets to hire, who gets to spend, and who gets credit when a client grows. Storyboard18 reports that WPP Media in India already moved under a unified leadership and profit-and-loss structure, and WPP Creative is the next piece being fitted into place. (storyboard18.com) The pressure behind this is not subtle. WPP said on February 26 that 2025 revenue fell 8.1% to £13.55 billion, operating profit fell 22.6%, and the company is now targeting £500 million in gross annualised cost savings by 2028. (wpp.com) (storyboard18.com) Cindy Rose, who became chief executive of WPP in 2025, has framed the fix as a move away from a loose holding-company model toward one company selling integrated, artificial-intelligence-enabled services. WPP says the whole system will be tied together by its marketing platform WPP Open, which it calls an agentic platform. (wpp.com 1) (wpp.com 2) India matters here because it is one of WPP’s biggest and messiest markets, with several large agency brands that have long operated with real autonomy. Storyboard18 says WPP is likely to judge each market separately when deciding who runs the creative profit and loss account, and India is the kind of market where one strong brand can pull the center of gravity toward itself. (storyboard18.com) That strong brand is likely Ogilvy. Storyboard18 describes Ogilvy as WPP India’s dominant creative force, with scale, long client relationships and leadership continuity that make it the natural anchor in any creative reshuffle. (storyboard18.com) Media moved first for a reason. Buying ads is already a business of dashboards, automation and optimization, so combining media teams under one profit line is easier than combining creative shops built around separate identities and star talent. WPP’s own strategy says media sits “at the heart” of the integrated offer it wants to sell. (storyboard18.com) (wpp.com) Investors are watching the rewiring in real time. A London Stock Exchange filing released on April 7 showed BlackRock at 6.88% of WPP voting rights after a threshold crossing on April 1, split between 4.91% in shares and 1.97% through financial instruments. (londonstockexchange.com) Storyboard18 then reported on April 10 that BlackRock’s stake had ticked up to 6.89%, or 74.46 million voting rights. That is a tiny move, but it landed while WPP was cutting headcount, pushing artificial intelligence deeper into workflows, and trying to convince the market that simplification can restore growth. (storyboard18.com) One reason India stands out inside a weak year is that it was one of the few bright spots in WPP’s geography mix. Storyboard18 says India grew 3.8% in 2025, while China fell 14.3%, North America fell 4.6%, and the United Kingdom fell 7.6%. (storyboard18.com) So this is not just one company renaming boxes on a slide. It is an ad giant trying to make creative work, media buying, production and technology behave like one machine before artificial intelligence turns the old agency model into a slower and more expensive option. (wpp.com) (storyboard18.com)