‘We’ve done 6,000 pitches this year’ – WPP dismisses new business concerns

“The pipeline might be a little bit smaller than last year,” conceded Read, despite its CFO’s assertions earlier in the call that it was broadly at the same level as last year.

However, he warned of focusing too much on WPP performance in “big media reviews” which with “big billing numbers, look much bigger than they are” and said to instead look at the “daily new business opportunities.”

“I can assure you, we take part in more [reviews] than I would like to imagine. I think we’ve done six or seven thousand new business pitches this year. Very few of them hit the headlines,” he said.

“There’s a daily case of new business opportunity. And I do think we’re seeing some bigger consolidation from clients, things that are not necessarily in the headlines and things people don’t necessarily know about that support what we’re doing.”

Account losses in Q1 included Coca-Cola moving its $700m North America media account to Publicis. WPP is also defending its share of the $2.4bn Mars business while PayPal this week said it was reviewing its $130m media account. On the flip side, it won Heineken’s global shopper marketing and commerce account and landed media agency of record duties for games giant Electronic Arts.

“I do think that we are seeing more competitor success in new business, but we can be the best when we’re at our best on the best day,” Read said.

He further insisted that its investments into data and AI are going to help its hit rate over the coming months. WPP acquired InfoSum earlier this month to strengthen its media capabilities while WPP Open, its AI platform, is being brought into every pitch.

“Our conversion in new business pitches does move up by around 10% when we put WPP Open in as part of our offering, which we’re doing in every pitch, not just because it increases the chance of success but it unlocks potential to explore more innovative commercial models, allows us to share the value we create and deal with some of the pricing pressures we’re seeing in the market,” he added.

GroupM, which has been put at the heart of WPP’s turnaround plan, saw revenues decline by 0.9% after client losses from last year dragged its positive US performance.

Given the uncertainty, WPP said it is looking at how to expand the work it is currently doing with clients. Its top 25 clients saw growth of 2.5% in the three months to March, leaving “plenty of headroom” to grow with them.

All this comes against a backdrop of ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. Echoing his rivals at Omnicom, IPG, Havas and Publicis, Read said the ongoing tariff saga had not yet impacted client spend.

“I do think that clients have learned from Covid and Ukraine that marketing is a cost in the short term and an investment in the long term. And there’s no doubt that faced by pressures, they balance it out,” he said.

Unilever and P&G, for example, both said in their market updates yesterday (April 24) that they would continue to invest in brand and marketing spend, rather than cut.

“I don’t think [CMOs] feel we have clarity now. We’re not yet going to see a major pullback in spending until we have clarity on tariffs or clarity on the direction of the economy. I spoke to a number of clients over the last few days ahead of this call, I think to date, we haven’t seen any major step down beyond what I think for us was already a relatively cautious outlook for us.”