Welcome to WPP, Jens: It’s going to get ugly

Great piece but the RECMA numbers are a nonsense. They bear no resemblance to what’s really booked.

Take Groupm losses over the last three years. Unilever, P&G, Jeep, Aldi, CUB, Carnival, most of SA Govt, AMEX, Nestle, GSK, VW, Pizza Hut, Specsavers and VW to name just a few !

That’s a massive amount of billings and a pretty bad story in client wins over the same period.

Tellingly the vast majority of losses are local clients .

Melbourne groupm is a disaster zone and the exodus of key staff Over the past 12 months shows how deep the issues are there.

Without groupm firing WPP has no chance to get back to where they, and the investors need them to be.

Be a few very nervous people at Berry St this week.

You can add VIC Govt to that list.

Supposedly out the door after too many warnings . Other agencies already being briefed.

Biggest hospital pass ever … sinking ship

I’d suggest a few high profile local execs at Groupm & WPP spend less time humble bragging on LinkedIn and actually deliver something tangible.

But.. but.. their personal brands are so important to their employers..!

Whoever said that comment around internal M&A is on the money. When have these big internal mergers ever worked?

What a great article.

I’d say Mindshare and their local exec have done well the past few years. The leadership at groupm and its other agencies not so much.

This is an all-or-nothing move and the only option left. A leader like Jens will either revive them or kill them faster. They are on a path to death so there’s little to lose.

WPP is totally cooked. Next…..

Anonymous comments like Herman’s are part of the problem in our industry

Says most losses are local clients but then lists 11 of 13 brands which are global (!)
Even the list is wrong , they have maintained most of SA Gov’t not lost it. (Where does he get his info?)

Recma numbers are all bulls**t though, i’m surprised anyone pays any attention to them

And Melbourne is a bit of a disaster all round for GroupM – Mediacom Mindshare and Essence all losing staff and clients. Only exception perhaps is Wavemaker with Aus Post win

I can not understand why clients like Westpac and NAB are still onboard. Why do they stay if the ship is sinking?

Yes they’re mainly global brands but the vast majority were local decisions to move . AMEX and VW were global decisions .

Whichever way you cut it it’s a terrible result compared to OMG and IPG over the same period for example .

It is natural to be nostalgic for the salad days when an ad “pulled its head off!”

That’s 1980s industry speak for an advertisement that got the customers to keenly and quickly buy the product*.

So the agency senior-execs could then go to lunch and not return. Seeking nirvana in manifesting French World War One Marshall Petain’s philosophy of “all that matters in life is food and sex”.

*Source: Retired ad guru Tim from Toorak (who knows who he is).

Bet Steady is loving these!

Wow did not realise that STW was struggling at the time of the merger, I always thought they were the stronger of the two companies.

Now it makes zero sense that the entire Exco is ex STW and if you came from a WPP company you were made to feel inferior.

A huge same to see so many people treated badly just because the don’t fit in the “boys club”.

A group ripe for downsizing. Much different market now than WPP salad days , Group M not relevant any more so that’s where I would start

If you’re leaving uni or under 28 you’ve got little interest in working for an advertising agency. Product teams at startups or tech firms are where the real talent is headed and where the money is.

If you’re client side, young or have a customer background wanting a CMO-type responsibility, you won’t be going to ad agencies to boost your business, career and profile. Indy and specialist shops, or even the consultancy-aligned agencies will keep the wider C-suite happy.

WPP is for career retirees

Any evidence to back that up, or are you just talking for yourself?

A key issue with being the largest holding company in the market is that you invariably become complicit in driving down your own (very thin) margins. Y&R pitching against Grey or Ogilvy and Group M trying to carve off low value creative for themselves.

I know of no other company that would prioritize and incentivize such destructive internal competition above strategic alignment.

Sir Martin started this mess, not the local team. He also created the requirement to service an astonishing debt, acquired through the purchase of businesses where the people clearly matter more than the brands they work for.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that some of their brands are failing to manage cultural challenges when short term debt (bond) management (servicing the purchase of mostly intangible assets) is the key KPI.

Good businesses understand that people are the most important asset. In the case of WPPANZ, more were bought than bought in.

Look for the new bloke to move the business towards more profitable paddocks. But none of it matters if he can’t get the most basics of business right.

Good luck to all invested.

Talking to a lot of recent/soon to be grads with STEM backgrounds I would say Jurassic Park is right.

In respect to ‘WPP being for career retirees’, the evidence you seek is the Linkedin profiles of the Exco. Same network for a decade or more, rotating through roles & offices.

Blaming Martin for the mess now doesn’t wash. It’s $300M smaller than it was when he engineered the takeover of STW. And the downsizing started from Day 1 of the merged entity and that has been very well summarised in the above article. Well done.

One of the best pieces I have read on Mumbrella. Nice job Steve!

WPP AUNZ is the football club who in 2019 is looking for the coach and footy dept who won premierships in the late 90’s. Refuse to accept the game has changed and by stacking it with yesterdays heroes they ensure that culture is ingrained.

It is a pretty horrible place to work. They try to distract from the toxic cultures, below market pay, bullying, unsupportive people managers and focus on delivering a vast amount of work above any sense personal wellbeing with fancy offices and free food.

You’ll be hard pushed to speak to any ex WPPAUNZ employee with anything positive to say.

It is a pretty horrible place to work. They try to distract from the toxic cultures, below market pay, bullying, unsupportive people managers and focus on delivering a vast amount of work above any sense personal wellbeing with fancy offices and free food.

You’ll be hard pushed to speak to any ex WPPAUNZ employee with anything positive to say.

Yeah, never quite got why power was given to the blunter instruments. Perhaps Martin felt indebted to them for so successfully driving down the price tag of his new acquisition.

you know what they say about opinions…

because people with STEM backgrounds have always made up such a huge proportion of an agency’s graduate intake…

It was ‘Sir’ Martins idea to put the incompetent team from STW in charge of the newly merged company. He left anyone with talent across AUNZ to the mercy of a large group of self interested semi retirees from STW and then a bunch of his not very bright mates. They simply rocked in and corporate bullied anyone who disagreed with them. They destroyed all faith in the business, all the talent left and then all the clients followed. Jens will need to be Jesus to make this a success, he’s not, it won’t.

If the cleanup runs as deep as this article suggests, the redundancy payments will be phenomenal. For some, Christmas will have come early.

for tanking WPPAUZ – not great Steedman.

Great article. Coming from BMW, Jens will be expected to rapidly engineer a giant money-making machine out of a lot of complex parts. It’s a big ask for someone who doesn’t really know the businesses or the market, but bold thinking is supposed to be what this industry is about. Jens may find the biggest challenge is that too many WPP execs have been beaten into Barinas after years of what you might call savaging. With both payouts and PTSD, lots of WPP’s best people have already left.

…and that’s the real issue and why they are all struggling. You can’t help clients with their problems if you don’t have skills in technology, data, or advanced analytics. Give me a creative thinker who understands numbers over a creative one who doesn’t any day.

Great read! Thanks Steve!

https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/mindshare-expands-remit-on-nab-account-to-include-search-and-social-596937
“Mindshare has proven to be a great partner, and we are pleased to extend our partnership. Our account team at Mindshare is responsive, engaging and genuinely interested in NAB and continuing to improve our customer experience.”

Count yourself luck you got free food…

He was great 15 years ago tho – he really showed those media networks

Here here! Could not have said it any better myself. Unless you are a senior exec you get no recognition and expected to work over hours with zero entitlements.

The best time for any CEO to start is when a business is in free-fall.
It’s really a win-win situation for Jens.
Fail and it’s not his fault.
Succeed and the credit is all his.
Year 1 = massive cost-cutting, lay-offs, mergers and trying to sweet talk clients into newly merged WPP agencies.
Clients will use this as an opportunity to squeeze WPP on costs, or leave.
Interesting times ahead.
T

I agree. If it tanks he can blame the previous management group. If it succeeds he can toot his own horn and say it’s all him.

Either way he wins (and is getting paid).

I for one cannot wait for a change or reign.

After years of watching and experiencing people being bullied, treated poorly and made ‘redundant’ for either pushing back on or not fitting into the high five-ing ‘friends of the exec-board’, and having to sit muted with fear, passed up on promotions or burning-out because saying no to endless work was not an option – even while the exec boards friends were at home sunning themselves reaping the benefits of being protected and knowing people high-up.

I cant wait to see people being held accountable for doing nothing but lunching, I cant wait to see these people corrected for bullying, fired for losing business and I cannot wait to never here ‘I know x on the board’ anymore. No more promotions or hirings because they went to ‘Scotts’ or some Double Bay private school.

Heres to 2020.

Great story Steve with extensive research and a thought provoking long read. A positive change verse short click bait headlines … with real in depth insights. Lets have more of this investigative journalism!

There is a back story. Mark Read and Jens go way back. Mark has a plan for WPPAUNZ. It’s aggressive and will be very unpleasant. To such a degree that he needs an outsider he knows/trusts, with no local emotional ties, with experience of organisational transformation and who he will pay handsomely to….yes, ‘execute’….the plan. In 2 years or less WPPAUNZ will look nothing like it does today. Good or bad it is what it is. Sorry….

….not sorry.

Intersting to see how things are going for WPP AUNZ two months down the track. Certainly, not much time yet passed to get a new company strategy going. But a new vibe must be spreading out there (at least that’s what I heard from my ex colleagues!) Hopefully, it’s all for the best as it could not get any worse… Cheers to Jens anyways and good luck.

Never read this article previously until now but so many facts in this piece. The WPP merge with STW never happened it was a STW takeover pure and simple.

Too many life rafts provided for loyal STW employees. “Talent” is defined by an employees tenure with STW rather than someone’s skills, experience and ability for the roles.

The group is extremely political – the inside joke is jobs for the boys. Too many people in head office hired by a personal relationship with no defined role, and no value being added other than the cost of their salary on the groups P&L

Will be interesting to see Jens first moves and whether the CFO will survive