United Kingdom – After a year marked by declining revenue and margin pressure, WPP has announced a bold restructuring plan to dismantle its holding company model, deliver £500m in cost savings and rebuild growth through a fully integrated, AI-enabled operating structure.
The multi-year strategic plan, branded ‘Elevate28’, represents the most significant structural shift at WPP in decades. At its core is a move away from a traditional holding company model to operate as a single, unified company designed to simplify decision-making, integrate capabilities and improve execution.
Announcing the plan, Cindy Rose OBE, chief executive officer of WPP, said:
“Today we are unveiling a bold plan for a simpler, more integrated WPP. Our intention is to stabilise the business, return to organic growth, create capacity to invest in the future and deliver attractive returns for our shareholders.”
She added that recent underperformance stemmed from “excessive organisational complexity, a lack of an integrated operating model and inconsistent strategic execution”, stressing that these were “within our power to fix”.
From holding group to single operating model
Under Elevate28, WPP will consolidate into four core operating units: WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions, structured across North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC.
The objective is to present clients with a fully integrated offer spanning media, creative, production and enterprise transformation — all connected through WPP Open, the company’s AI-powered marketing platform.
The strategy is anchored on four pillars:
- Deliver superior growth for clients, with media and data at the centre of an integrated proposition
- Simplify the operating model and strengthen go-to-market execution
- Unlock the advantage of WPP Open, including its Open Intelligence data layer
- Create firm financial foundations, including £500m in annualised gross cost savings by 2028
A new standalone unit, WPP Enterprise Solutions, will bring together customer experience, commerce, CRM, content transformation and technology capabilities, targeting growing demand for AI-driven business transformation.
Three phases to 2028
The transformation will unfold in three stages:
Phase 1 – Stabilise (2026): Focus on improving net new business performance, executing initial cost savings and rationalising the portfolio. WPP aims to deliver £250m in gross run-rate savings by the end of 2026.
Phase 2 – Build (2027): Embed the new operating model and go-to-market structure, with a targeted return to organic growth during the year.
Phase 3 – Accelerate (2028 onwards): Position WPP as a lower-cost, AI-enabled business with improved margins, stronger cash conversion and sustained organic growth.
To achieve £500m in annualised savings, WPP expects around £400m in restructuring cash costs over two years. A significant portion of savings will be reinvested into high-growth areas such as media, commerce, production and enterprise AI capabilities, while the remainder will support margin recovery.
Financial backdrop
The overhaul comes amid weaker 2025 performance. WPP reported revenue of £13.55bn, down 3.6% like-for-like, with revenue less pass-through costs falling 5.4% LFL. Headline operating margin declined to 13.0%, reflecting lower revenues and restructuring costs.
For 2026, WPP expects like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs to decline in the mid-to-high single digits in the first half before improving in the second half. Headline operating margin is forecast at 12–13% as the company invests in restructuring and growth initiatives.
Despite the near-term pressure, WPP reiterated its commitment to maintaining an investment-grade balance sheet. The board has proposed a final dividend of 7.5p, bringing the full-year dividend to 15.0p, which it intends to maintain in 2026.
Notably, in 2025, WPP faced significant headwinds, including declining performance, high-profile client losses, and the departure of several key executives across the company and its subsidiaries.
Resetting for AI-era growth
Elevate28 positions WPP to compete in a marketing landscape reshaped by AI, changing client demands and macro volatility. By collapsing structural silos and integrating media, creativity, production and enterprise technology under a single operating model, WPP is seeking to shift from a federation of agencies to a unified growth partner.
WPP’s focus on AI integration and unified capabilities mirrors a broader industry transformation. Havas, for example, has committed roughly €400 million into its Converged.AI strategy, embedding AI across targeting, analytics, content personalisation and creative production while partnering with AI infrastructure providers to accelerate agentic solutions across its network, not just for specialist teams but for general delivery workflows.
Meanwhile, Publicis Groupe has moved to broaden its data and AI footprint through deals such as the acquisition of Lotame, aimed at bolstering its identity and data capabilities, and by integrating generative AI via expanded partnerships with firms like Adobe Firefly across its CoreAI platform to scale personalised creative production and media activation.
These competitive benchmarks underscore a common strategic theme among major holding groups: building integrated AI‑enabled systems that combine data infrastructure, creative tools and workflow automation — a landscape WPP is aiming to navigate with Elevate28 and its agentic WPP Open platform.
As Rose put it:
“The momentum we are seeing from the decisive action we’ve already taken gives me the confidence that we’re on the right path to creating a WPP that is fit for the future and built to win.”
