“Not an agency, but an operating system”: Jon Cook on how WPP Creative will work

New Delhi: Last week, WPP formally launched a new creative operating unit called WPP Creative, bringing together its biggest advertising, PR and design brands under one umbrella as part of a wider turnaround plan aimed at simplifying the group and restoring growth.

Unveiled during its 2025 preliminary results and strategy update on February 26, 2026, the move is positioned as a structural reset away from a traditional holding-company model. 

WPP’s CEO Cindy Rose said the group’s “underperformance” has been driven by complexity, weak integration and inconsistent execution, and that the remedy is a “simpler, more integrated WPP” operating through four core units—WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions—across four regions.

“Not merging agency brands”

On the earnings call, Rose sought to pre-empt the obvious question: Does WPP Creative mean consolidation of marquee names such as Ogilvy and VML?

Rose said, “We are not merging agency brands. We are not consolidating agency brands. We are not sunsetting agency brands. On the contrary, we will unite them in new ways and empower them like never before.”

WPP Creative will be home to brands including VML, Ogilvy, AKQA, Burson, Landor, and Design Bridge and Partners. WPP Creative will be led by Jon Cook, who also continues as global CEO of VML.

A response to how clients now buy

The strategic logic is rooted in client behaviour. WPP’s leadership argued that marketers want the choice and identity of strong agency brands, but they do not want to do the hard work of stitching capabilities together across silos.

Cook said, “We're not using WPP Creative as a brand or an agency. It's not an agency. It's an operating system that lets those great agencies, those very creative agencies, operate together.”

He said clients “love our agencies” but “found it hard to work with them,” because clients or WPP’s global client leaders often had to “do the navigation.”

That “navigation” problem is what WPP Creative is meant to solve, while keeping the brands intact. 

Cook pointed to external validation of those brands, noting recent creative rankings that placed Ogilvy and VML at the top, and argued WPP does not want to dilute that equity through a forced merger.

What changes in delivery

WPP’s pitch is that WPP Creative will unlock easier access to people and capabilities across agencies and markets, without old internal constraints.

Rose said “a simplified structure” will remove barriers for global client leaders and create “a frictionless path to our top talent,” so WPP can match talent to briefs faster.

She also linked WPP Creative to a broader capability promise. With WPP Creative, agency brands will have access to “the full modern stack” across commerce, customer experience and digital platforms, she said, positioning the unit as a distribution channel for capabilities that have often sat in different parts of the group.

WPP is also trying to hardwire collaboration between creative, media and production. Rose said tighter alignment with WPP Media and WPP Production is intended to ensure “creative ideas are instantly adaptable and executable across the whole customer funnel.”

A new P&L logic, similar to media

One of the more material operating shifts is financial accountability. WPP told investors that WPP Creative will run on P&Ls and that the regional and market model will mirror media structures. It will have one P&L for WPP Creative at the market level, while agencies will still be tracked on revenues and contribution, but that agency P&L will “not be the lead P&L.”

The AI and production layer underneath

WPP’s overhaul is anchored in WPP Open, which Rose described as the “agentic marketing platform” at the centre of how the company connects capabilities and scales workflow.

WPP has also begun to standardise production as a separate engine. In January 2026, it announced WPP Production, uniting Hogarth with production capabilities across the network, and linking production workflows to WPP Open.

In the earnings call, Rose argued WPP Creative will benefit from this shared, scaled layer, with WPP Open enabling creative teams to work “in a standardised way” across both large and smaller clients.

Cost and simplification are not side notes

Even as WPP emphasises “growth” as the objective, the operational and cost agenda is explicit. WPP’s Elevate28 plan targets £500 million of gross annual cost savings by 2028, with expected cash restructuring costs of around £400 million over 2026 and 2027.

Rose argues that simplification is what funds reinvestment in high-growth areas—media, commerce, “high velocity” production and enterprise solutions—while also rebuilding margins.

Why WPP Creative is central to the reset

For WPP, the bet is that this “operating system” approach can do three things at once: reduce internal friction, improve speed and consistency for clients, and make the creative networks more competitive by giving them easier access to data, tech, production and commerce capabilities that increasingly sit at the centre of modern marketing.