T&Pm founder Johnny Hornby has been moved on to the executive committee at owner WPP, which completed its full acquisition of the agency in November.
From this summer Hornby will be CEO of WPP’s Specialist Communications agency division, which includes agencies like CMI, Design Bridge and Landor, while remaining CEO at T&Pm. The new role seems to be a lot about integrating WPP’s Open AI platform into the suite of agencies – something that the 100% sale of T&Pm was designed to facilitate, and Hornby has been pretty successful with at T&Pm.
WPP has had a pretty dismal 2025 so far, with like-for-like revenues down 2.8% in Q1; the Specialist Communications division was down 1.2%, so could be said to be doing marginally better than the group as a whole.
Hornby’s proven business and client handling skills will come in useful, and the new position will perhaps keep him in the running as a successor to WPP’s current CEO, Mark Read. At the Specialist Communications division, Hornby succeeds Dominic Grainger, who held the from 2019 and has a background in sports marketing.
By keeping his CEO role at T&Pm, Hornby is maintaining some consistency at the agency, which CEO Sarah Golding recently quit after 23 years.
