TL;DR: WPP's chief executive officer Mark Read has announced he will step down at the end of the year, after three decades with the holding company. Read did the job he was asked to do: stabilise, streamline, modernise—sort of. But in a culture where no one cares who made the ad, only whether they can skip it, steady leadership isn’t enough.
Mark Read just stepped down as CEO of WPP, the world’s largest advertising holding company. His resignation barely registered outside the industry. Few consumers know who he is. Fewer care. Your mum doesn’t know who he is. Your customers don’t care. And the teenager bingeing MrBeast on YouTube? He’s already skipped your ad.
But that’s exactly the point.
Mark Read’s exit wasn’t scandalous. It was respectable. But when the departure of the most powerful man in advertising lands with the cultural weight of a mid-table football transfer, you have to ask: has the industry lost the plot?
When Holding Companies Lose Cultural Relevance
WPP once mattered because it moved culture. It was the machine behind the messages. But over time, it swapped bold for bloated. It traded edge for org charts. Strategy got buried in decks. Creativity got scheduled between procurement calls.
And the consumer? Couldn’t care less. They don’t know your agency. They don’t care about your holding structure. They just want to hit “Skip Ad” and get back to cat videos, Pilates tutorials, and Uncle Rodger.
You can’t win attention with a credentials deck and you can’t afford to move like a tanker in an era of jet skis.
Creativity Delayed Is Opportunity Lost.
While CMOs like Samsung’s Benjamin Braun are out here talking about AI like it’s a Formula One engine, agencies are still polishing the chassis. Creators are building brands faster than agencies can schedule a QBR. And PR teams? Still insisting on pre-approved questions and four-week lead times for interviews that say nothing.
Mark Read did what the brief asked. He steadied WPP post-Sorrell, consolidated the chaos, sold off the fat, and introduced internal tools like WPP Open. He brought order to the disorder.
But “order” isn’t a growth strategy.
No shade to Read. Honestly? He’s earned a rest. Thirty years in the game, seven at the top. End of year, close the laptop, book a flight to Antigua, join the snow birds in Morris Bay. Respect.
But this isn’t just Read. It’s about a model that feels increasingly slower than your dad’s Bluetooth.
Missed Moments, Misread Signals
Let’s not forget Read’s Cannes moment. An interview with Elon Musk that should have been a strategic high point but instead fell flat. Musk, after publicly telling advertisers to “go **** themselves,” appeared on stage to a round of applause. Read, in the moderator seat, attempted to draw clarity from chaos.
And while the session had all the spectacle you’d expect from Cannes, it lacked depth. Musk delivered vague takes on free speech, advertising as content, and the promise of AI and humanoid robots, without much in the way of strategy. Read played it safe, avoiding real confrontation or useful interrogation. It was closer to brand pageantry than a demonstration of executive leadership.
And that’s the problem.
The ad industry doesn’t need more carefully moderated soundbites. It needs friction. Provocation. Especially when sitting opposite a figure like Musk.
Read’s restraint felt diplomatic but in hindsight, it underscored WPP’s broader issue: too polished, too cautious, too slow to react in a world that doesn’t reward passive facilitation.
When Philip Jansen joined as WPP’s chair, industry insiders murmured that a shift was imminent. He wasn’t there to pat backs. He walked the halls, asked the awkward questions, looked under the admin hood. But since his arrival, WPP has lost three major clients, raising questions about whether the disruption was strategic renewal or simply turbulence at the top.
Another Blow: Publicis Groupe Wins the Mars $1.7 billion Global Media Account
This week, Publicis Groupe officially won the $1.7 billion global media account for Mars. Covering brands like Snickers, M&Ms, Royal Canin and Pedigree across more than 70 markets. The win ends WPP's long hold on the business and marks the third major loss this year for EssenceMediacom.
The new setup? A bespoke unit called “OneMars,” backed by Publicis’ AI tools and human insights. IPG’s Weber Shandwick picks up the PR side. Creative duties (for now) remain with Omnicom.
It’s a full-scale shift across media, production, paid social, commerce, and influencer marketing, a clear indication that Mars is prioritizing speed, integration, and global consistency. According to Gülen Bengi, Mars’ lead CMO, the company is focused on putting its fans “in the driver’s seat” and required a marketing ecosystem capable of personalization at scale.
The move marks a significant loss for WPP, following two other high-profile departures: Coca-Cola’s $700 million North American media account and Paramount’s two-decade-long partnership, both of which also transitioned to Publicis.
At the same time, platforms like Meta and Amazon have evolved into end-to-end advertising engines. Rather than pitching for business, they are now generating creative assets, media plans, and campaigns in real time, produced and deployed within minutes.
The Industry Needs to Lead Differently
WPP Media, once positioned as the company’s forward-looking solution, is now facing questions about its role. What was once framed as the future increasingly resembles a managed retreat.
Read left respectfully. The industry? It needs to lead differently. Less like a risk committee, more like it knows 2026 is fast approaching, and the only ones still fit to lead might be the Creative Directors who stopped waiting for approval.
What CEOs and Brand Leaders Must Learn Now
Before moving on, it is worth noting Mark Read’s final remarks as CEO of WPP. In his departure statement, Read reflected on a 30-year tenure with the company, saying, “When I took on this role, our mission was to build a simpler, stronger business... powered by world-leading technology.” He described WPP as an “incredible company” and acknowledged its global talent, AI capabilities, and client relationships, concluding: “It is the right time to hand over the leadership of this amazing company.”
Read’s words offered a measured summary of his legacy. Yet the tone of his farewell underscores a central tension within the company, an enduring confidence in structure, even as the industry accelerates toward transformation.
A business that can’t move at the speed of culture will be moved out of culture.
If you’re still hiding behind layers of sign-off, still waiting three weeks for a timeline, still pitching “integration” like it’s innovation, you’re already behind. Way behind.
Leadership, increasingly, looks less like process and more like presence, adaptive, accessible, and in motion.
Want to matter? Be human. Be visible. Be somewhere unexpected. Show up on a podcast. Answer questions like a person, not a press release. Lead like a creator.
In a fragmented and fast-moving market, people follow people. Not frameworks. Not holding companies. Not mission statements.
What WPP Actually Needs Next
It doesn’t need a manager. It needs a cultural architect. A taste-maker with a spine and a mic. Someone who knows the difference between a deck and a point of view. Flatten the structure; Kill the acronyms. Stop selling efficiency.
Build systems where AI handles the grunt work so people can think. Lead with discernment. Say something worth hearing, or risk being overlooked.
Leave behind the suits, the stock photos, the legacy PR circuit. Relevance now means being relatable to the next generation, not just reassuring to the last.
The future of agencies is in operating systems, for brands that want to live in culture.
The holding company model isn’t dead. But unless it becomes a platform, not a pyramid, it’s running out of time.
To Agencies, and the Clients Who Depend on Them
As THE GOODS grows, more agencies reach out on behalf of their clients. Most are a pleasure to work with. But some? They stifle the process, slow things down, and insist on reviewing questions in advance, only to churn out another lifeless bit of safe PR fluff.
Let’s be clear: this industry doesn't need more control. It needs more character.
Articles don’t just live in inboxes, they live on Google. Consumers find them. So might investors, partners, and future employees. They’ll smell inauthenticity from a mile off.
So here are six things worth remembering:
- Be a person, not a press release.
- Talk where culture listens.
- Move at the speed of platforms, not procurement.
- Act like a creator, not a custodian.
- Let AI do the work so your team can do the thinking.
- Win attention before you ask for conversion.
Note to Agencies: Clients don’t drift. They defect. So if they’re gone, stop asking what they wanted. Start asking what made them give up on you.
WPP: A Case Study in Prestige Without Progress
And the latest numbers don’t help.
Just this week, according to Reuters, WPP Media cut its global ad revenue growth forecast for 2025 from 7.7% to 6%, citing economic and trade policy uncertainty. Global ad spend is still projected to hit $1.08 trillion next year, but the momentum is clearly cooling. The U.S., still the biggest market, is expected to grow just 5.6% to $404.7 billion.
Digital is expected to account for more than 73 per cent of global advertising spend this year. By the end of 2025, user-generated content is forecast to surpass professionally produced media in share of ad revenue, a reflection of changing preferences for content that feels unpolished, personal, and immediate.
In short: audiences are turning away from high-gloss, high-budget formats and toward footage filmed on phones, edited quickly, and often distributed without ceremony. The aesthetic is more James May reviewing a car on YouTube from his driveway than Cannes Lions.
Under-produced, unscripted and unexpectedly compelling.
Meanwhile, print advertising is projected to decline by another 3.1 per cent this year to $45.5bn. Even search, long the industry’s workhorse, is shifting. AI-generated ads are on the rise, and those still reliant on traditional keyword models may find themselves outpaced.
WPP and its peers have updated their forecasts. Whether they can update their frameworks with equal urgency is the more pressing question.
This moment will matter long after Mark Read’s departure. Because it was never just about one CEO. It’s about an industry that forgot how to show up. Where creativity is treated like risk, and speed like threat. Where CMOs perform caution while creators run laps around them.
Because the next wave of leadership won’t win by being louder. It’ll win by being faster, more human, and genuinely hard to ignore. Just how much longer will winning Cannes Lions Creative Company of the Year carry meaningful weight in an industry now driven by platform-native content, real-time relevance, and creators who build global reach without agencies?
Mark Read’s departure isn’t the story. It’s the symptom. Creators are building brands from their bedrooms, and relevance is being earned in seconds. The industry simply can no longer rely on hierarchy, heritage, or headlines.
WPP may be a case study in what happens when institutions mistake prestige for progress. Legacy is no longer a strategy. The awards will still be handed out, but the audience has already moved on.
