WPP axes GroupM for WPP Media

Yet another big change is coming at WPP – inevitable given its slow or no-growth and becalmed share price – with GroupM, its once all-conquering media business, to be rebranded as WPP Media. GroupM consists mainly of EssenceMediacom, Mindshare and Wavemaker.

Big media pitches tend to be holding company operations these days (although there’s usually a lead existing agency) so WPP Media makes sense. But it’s also bound to lead to job losses and other cutbacks as the about-to-be WPP Media under returning boss Brian Lesser copes with account losses. It recently lost Coca-Cola US media and PayPal although it’s had big wins too including some of Amazon. GroupM currently employs around 40,000 people.

GroupM’s demise is bound to lead to speculation that WPP’s creative agencies face further “rationalisation.” Currently some legacy brands – JWT, Y&R and Wunderman are grouped under VML with Ogilvy remaining separate. But the holding company also has a slew of other quasi-independent agencies which have not been performing strongly plus AKQA and Grey lumped together.

WPP Creative now looks a pretty obvious thing to do. WPP already has WPP Open X handling Coca-Cola creative.

WPP is no longer the biggest ad holding company by some measures (Publicis is the biggest by market cap while the combined Omnicom and IPG will be the biggest all-round when and if their merger goes through.)

For years WPP’s overriding strategy was to be the biggest, expecting that to attract the biggest clients. Now that’s no longer the case it can attempt to create a leaner organization. This may reflect the views of new chairman Philip Jansen, acting alongside CEO Mark Read.