Publicis challenges WPP’s Open X for Coca-Cola media

WPP is defending the North American media part of its flagship $4bn exclusive marketing deal with Coca-Cola against Publicis, runner-up when the account was awarded to WPP’s bespoke Coke agency Open X in 2021. North American media is worth about $800m.

Open X pulls in resources from various parts of WPP, latterly a team from Grey with EssenceMediacom handling its recent Paris Olympics media campaign. To lose any Coke business would be a big blow to WPP – Publicis would hardly wish to stop at one part of the giant global account.

WPP recently reported disappointing Q4 figures with growth for the whole of 2024 down 0.8%. Publicis was the best performing of all the ad holding companies in 2024 with growth of 5.8%. Most of the French-based group’s business is in North America.