Is WPP’s Elevate28 strong enough to counter Publicis and Omnicom's momentum?

New Delhi: WPP has unveiled a multi-year strategy called Elevate28, promising simplification, integration and £500 million in annual cost savings by 2028. The plan is positioned as a reset for a holding company model that is under strain in an AI-led economy.

The group wants to move away from its federation structure and operate as a single company built around four units. These are WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions.

Chief Executive Officer Cindy Rose said WPP aims to be “the trusted growth partner for the world’s leading brands in the era of AI.” She acknowledged that recent underperformance was driven by “excessive organisational complexity, a lack of an integrated operating model and inconsistent strategic execution,” adding that these are issues “within our power to fix.”

The financial context explains the urgency. Revenue in 2025 fell 8.1% to £13.55 billion. Headline operating margin dropped to 13% from 15% a year earlier. Reported operating profit fell to £382 million, while adjusted net debt rose to £2.17 billion.

On paper, it is a structural reset. The question is whether it becomes an operational change.

Simplification is overdue, but not sufficient

Ashish Bhasin, Founder of The Bhasin Consulting Group and former CEO of Asia Pacific at Dentsu, believes simplification was inevitable.

“The way I see it, all holding companies will have to simplify their structures. The way they have continued to exist is not tenable anymore. They have to move into a more simplified structure,” he said.

At the same time, he described the move as necessary but delayed. In his view, for agencies across the board, not just WPP, this feels “like too little, too late.” He said these steps should ideally have been taken much earlier, though he conceded it is still better to act now than not at all.

From a client perspective, Bhasin suggested that structural charts will not make much difference. Clients, he said, “will always wait and watch.” What really matters to them is simple. “Who are the people working on my brand? What is the quality of talent in my business?” he stated.

He added that clients are “less bothered about agency branding and internal structures than we think they are.” What they care about is the quality of talent and the efficiency delivered.

The broader point, according to him, is clear. Integration has value only if it improves the work and the output.

Is this real integration?

Rohit Ohri, Founder of OHRIGINAL, is more sceptical. He described Elevate28 as “integration theatre.”

“WPP's Elevate28 is what I'd call integration theatre. Structural simplification that looks clean on an org chart but doesn't solve the underlying problem,” he said.

He pointed to the creation of WPP Creative, which will house brands such as Ogilvy, VML and AKQA. According to him, placing strong legacy brands under a new umbrella does not automatically dissolve competition between them.

Ohri questioned whether the creation of WPP Creative truly simplifies anything. “It is positioned as a unified creative offering, but inside will sit Ogilvy, VML, and AKQA. Each retaining its own identity, leadership, and competitive instincts,” he said. In his view, that is not simplification but the addition of another structural layer.

He described the model as an agency matryoshka, with agencies nested inside agencies. “The client sees one doll. Inside, there are many more. Each with its own face, its own agenda.”

For Ohri, the real issue lies beneath the structure. He said the critical question is not whether WPP has redrawn reporting lines but whether it has addressed incentives. “The real question is not whether WPP has redrawn the boxes. It is whether they have solved the incentive problem,” he said.

If creative teams at Ogilvy continue to be measured on awards, VML on its own billings and media teams on separate metrics, then integration remains cosmetic. “You have not integrated. You have just changed the reporting lines,” he said.

According to him, genuine integration would be visible in execution. Clients, he argued, want faster decisions and better work. “The test of Elevate28 is whether a brief moves through WPP faster than before, whether the work is genuinely unified rather than negotiated between competing interests.”

The cost savings dilemma

A headline number in the plan is £500 million in annualised gross savings by 2028. WPP expects to incur around £400 million in cash restructuring costs over two years to achieve this.

For Bhasin, the emphasis on savings signals caution. He argued that much of what is being presented as transformation across holding companies is, at its core, cost rationalisation. “All the efforts that everyone, including WPP, is making are about cutting costs. You can give a hundred reasons for restructuring, but there is always a bottom-line attachment,” he said.

He was direct about where such savings usually come from. “Where will these savings come from? Largely from reducing people. Sixty to sixty-five per cent of any agency’s cost is manpower.”

For him, the danger lies in mistaking efficiency for strategy. “Nobody becomes rich by cutting costs. You become rich by earning more,” he said, stressing that trimming expenses cannot substitute for building new revenue engines.

He acknowledged that excess needs to be removed but warned against hollowing out capability in the process. “If there is fat, you need to cut it. But equally, you need to invest in building muscle. That is where agencies have failed and continue to fail.”

Ohri read the £500 million savings target as a signal of defensive intent. “This number tells you what Elevate28 really is. A margin play dressed as a transformation,” he said.

In his assessment, if integration were the real priority, the focus would be on unified data architecture, shared performance systems and aligned metrics rather than headline cost extraction. The prominence of savings, he suggested, indicates pressure to reassure markets more than a deep creative reinvention.

Debt and financial pressure

Adityan Kayalakal, Vice-President Brand at Pocket FM, viewed Elevate28 through a financial lens, arguing that the balance sheet cannot be separated from the strategy.

“WPP’s debt is about £2.2 billion. Last year it was around £1.7 billion. That is a 24% year-on-year increase,” he said. “At that rate, just paying down debt would take 11 years without factoring in significant interest payments.”

He pointed out that restructuring expenses are likely to compress free cash flow in the near term. “If you are already debt-ridden, you lack the flexibility to make big acquisitions,” he said, suggesting that financial strain limits room for aggressive capability building.

In his assessment, WPP is attempting to transform while operating under constraint, which makes large, long-term bets harder to execute with confidence.

Drawing from his time at Publicis, Kayalakal stressed that integration is rarely quick. “In 2015, when I was at Publicis, I started working on integration and collaboration. It became a formal role for me from 2016 to 17, and I also became the head of the first Power of One account. It took Publicis five years to perfect that model,” he said.

He noted that Publicis integrated from a position of relative strength, having already invested in technology assets and absorbed earlier shocks. WPP, on the other hand, is attempting structural integration, cost savings and AI repositioning at the same time.

“Integration takes time. Getting people to work differently is a sea change. My concern is that they are taking on too many challenges on too many fronts,” he said.

How tech giants are rewriting the rules

Beyond structure and debt lies a deeper competitive shift. The pressure is not coming only from rival holding companies. It is coming from technology firms that are building AI capabilities at scale and speed.

Bhasin said agencies are underestimating how aggressively technology players are moving. He argued that many in advertising are failing to grasp the scale of disruption driven by artificial intelligence and rapid advances in technology. In his words, they are not fully reading “the writing on the wall” about what these changes are doing to the industry.

He contrasted this with the approach taken by large technology companies. According to him, their mindset is fundamentally different. They are willing to pay top dollar for the best talent and invest heavily to reshape markets.

That appetite for bold investment, he suggested, stands in sharp contrast to agencies that are focusing on cost control.

For Bhasin, the risk is clear. Defensive downsizing at a time of technological acceleration could leave agencies weaker rather than leaner.

Kayalakal described AI as a force multiplier, arguing that its output is only as strong as the thinking behind it. If the input is weak, the output will be weak. Strong strategic input, however, can dramatically enhance results.

He cautioned that trimming senior strategic talent to protect margins could undermine long-term competitiveness. Agencies may require fewer execution-heavy layers, but they will need more high-quality thinkers who can guide AI systems effectively.

Ohri added that competing in an AI-shaped market requires more than rebranding divisions. Integration, he said, must be backed by shared systems and unified metrics. Without that operational backbone, collaboration remains superficial, and agencies risk falling further behind technology-led competitors.

The talent question

Bhasin was candid about what he sees as a steady erosion of talent quality in advertising. “The quality of people in advertising is deteriorating by the day,” he said.

He illustrated the shift through his own career trajectory. “When I was at Lintas, we were a Day One company at top campuses. When I was running Dentsu, we were no longer a Day One company,” he said.

By Day One, Bhasin was referring to companies that students prioritise on the very first day of campus placements, when the most sought-after employers make offers and top-ranked students typically sign up. Advertising agencies, he suggested, once competed with the best consulting firms, banks and consumer goods companies for that early access to top talent.

Over time, that appeal weakened. As margins tightened and compensation growth slowed, agencies slipped down the preference list. Students who once saw advertising as a high-prestige, high-learning career option increasingly chose technology firms, consulting companies or start-ups instead.

For Bhasin, this shift reflects a broader erosion in the industry’s perceived value and attractiveness among top graduates.

Kayalakal agreed that the traditional headcount-heavy model is changing, particularly with AI automating repetitive execution. However, he stressed that this does not reduce the need for strong strategic capability. 

Agencies may need fewer coordinators and production-heavy layers, but they will require sharper thinkers and integrators who can bring clarity, direction and judgement to AI-driven systems.

The broader industry challenge

All three perspectives point to a larger reality. This is not just about one company. The pressure WPP is facing reflects a broader structural strain across global holding companies.

For years, the commission and fee-based model has struggled to keep pace with client expectations around measurable outcomes and business impact. 

In an AI-driven economy, billing for hours and headcount looks increasingly outdated. Clients want speed, integration and accountability. Agencies are still recalibrating how to price and deliver that value.

What lies ahead is not a cosmetic reset but a fundamental rethink. Pricing models, internal incentives and capability investments have to move together. Cutting costs without building new strengths will not solve the problem. Nor will rebranding divisions be successful without aligning how people are measured and rewarded.

Elevate28 is WPP’s attempt to steady performance, simplify structure and reposition itself for an AI-shaped future. The ambition is clear. The financial pressure is real. The structural logic has merit.

But the next three years will reveal whether this becomes a genuine reinvention or disciplined consolidation under pressure.

In an industry being reshaped by automation and data, structure alone will not determine success. The outcome will depend on whether agencies invest in the right talent, build real technological depth and create systems that reward collaboration rather than competition.