GroupM’s shakeup and possible impact on workforce

When the news hit on May 6 that WPP might retire the GroupM name and replace it with ‘WPP Media,’ it raised eyebrows across the industry—not for the logo swap, but for what it might mean for the group’s broader direction. 

GroupM has long been the media arm of WPP, created in 2003 to bring together the likes of Mindshare and MEC (now part of Wavemaker) into a centralised investment hub. In adland terms, it was WPP’s big reset, ringing order to media chaos.

For over two decades, it has housed agencies like Mindshare, MediaCom, Maxus, MEC, and later, Wavemaker and Essence.

In 2005, Maxus, which had operated as a local media agency under the larger umbrella, was scaled globally to compete in a rapidly digitising media world. Over the years, mergers and reorgs followed: MEC and Maxus combined to form Wavemaker in 2017; in 2022, Essence and MediaCom merged to create EssenceMediacom. The objective was to streamline offerings and adapt to clients’ growing demands for integrated solutions.

Through it all, GroupM became the money muscle behind WPP’s media operations, handling planning, buying, tech, data, and analytics for thousands of global brands. At its peak, GroupM employed more than 40,000 people across markets, accounting for nearly a third of WPP’s overall headcount.

Even in a tough macro environment, it remained the strongest performer within the WPP ecosystem. In WPP’s preliminary full-year 2024 results, while creative, PR, and digital agencies were down 3.9%, GroupM clocked a 2.7% organic growth. Q1 2025 still saw GroupM hold relatively steady despite WPP’s broader revenue dip.

In markets like India, it led new-business wins with clients like Maruti Suzuki, Reckitt, and PhonePe. India alone contributes 5% to WPP’s global revenue, with 11,000 people under the GroupM banner.

So why shake the tree now?

Trimming the branches

Beyond branding, this change is part of a broader restructuring within WPP aimed at simplifying operations and cutting costs. The company has been investing heavily in technology, particularly artificial intelligence, to drive efficiency and eliminate duplicate overhead across its networks.

Explaining the top-down lens, Ashish Bhasin, Founder The Bhasin Consulting Group said, “When a global company makes a decision, they take it from a 30000-feet view — looking at all countries from a single lens. In this era of cost-cutting, there's huge potential for saving money. That’s what they’re looking at. Their overarching goal is global optimisation.”

He added, “Let’s say you’ve got five media agencies, and you put them all under one umbrella — then you save the cost of four CEOs, four CFOs, and other duplicated roles.”

Similarly, Lloyd Mathias, Marketing expert, strategist, and business leader, said, “The restructuring will help them cut down on manpower costs. There will be a lot of synergies. It will save them a lot operationally. This will clearly be an opportunity to reduce the workforce. Operational efficiencies will lead to workforce reductions, conservatively, at least 15%, to my mind.”

The push to ‘WPP Media’ is closely tied to internal changes led by GroupM’s CEO, Brian Lesser (who joined WPP from Omnicom in late 2023). In early May 2025, Lesser sent a global memo to GroupM staff outlining a new “single operating model.” Under the plan, GroupM’s agency brands will no longer operate as separate P&L businesses. Instead, they will be merged under one unified structure. “Agency-specific job titles will sunset,” the memo said, in favour of a “unified named structure that reflects our commitment to operating as one company”. 

Each brand name will continue, but only as a client-team label – there will be one P&L and one management team for WPP’s global media business.

Mathias elaborated, “The big idea here is consolidation: a single P&L, a single operating model. Obviously, there will be workforce reductions, and there’ll be a much clearer alignment with WPP's overall vision.”

AI-led automation, shared services, and integrated teams will do the heavy lifting, leaving little room for duplicate roles.

Branching like the rest of the grove

If this move goes through, it will mark a major rebranding effort, aligning WPP with rivals like Publicis and Omnicom, which already operate unified media networks (Publicis Media and Omnicom Media Group). Rebranding to ‘WPP Media’ would put WPP’s media arm on the same naming footing and avoid confusion about its relationship to the parent company.

Bhasin sees this rebranding as overdue. He said, “There’s a trend I’ve noticed with most of the holding companies: they’re trying to simplify their structures and move towards a common branding for the group. In some ways, this was kind of long overdue because it had become too complicated. But it's always a fine balance — every move you make comes with its own pros and cons.”

This shift also highlights the evolution of client concerns and industry dynamics. Originally, GroupM was created to manage separate media agency brands like Mindshare, Wavemaker, and EssenceMediacom, ensuring that competing clients didn’t share the same agency. However, with digital transformation blurring industry boundaries and intensifying competition, does that need for separation still hold?

GroupM was born in an era where media agencies had to keep rival clients at arm’s length. That need has faded, shared Mathias.

Companies like WPP now work across such a wide swath of businesses, and in the digital era, virtually every company is competing with every other. So, that need has gone, and therefore,it’s quite a rational decision.

- Lloyd Mathias

Falling leaves

With every consolidation, something familiar fades. Legacy equity plays a crucial role in determining the fate of established brands like Mindshare, Wavemaker, and others. 

Reflecting on the cyclical nature of the industry, Harish Bijoor, Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. said, “Legacy equity becomes a part of the legacy when long-standing names get merged to represent just one. The same is happening with Mindshare, Wavemaker, etc. I do believe we live in a day and age where consolidation seems to be the norm. This entire thing is cyclical. In the beginning, big brands break up to become smaller brands. And then smaller brands are merged together to become one big brand. I do believe we are at that stage of development as far as brands in the space we are discussing are concerned.”

While consolidation is inevitable, the transition can be tricky. And legacy still matters—especially when you’re dealing with names like Mindshare or Wavemaker. Bhasin cautioned: “If the branding isn’t managed carefully, those names could get lost. The challenge lies in how to transfer that equity without losing too much.”

This challenge becomes even more important as legacy brands’ names are restructured or merged, as the goal is to retain the established brand equity while embracing a new identity. 

WPP’s new era of ‘one identity, one P&L’ might be a bold move toward operational simplicity, but if there’s anything past mergers have shown us, it’s this: in the race to streamline globally, something important often gets left behind — local legacy.

Bhasin, who has witnessed firsthand how global rebrands can erase deep-rooted equity built over decades, said, “In this process, very strong local brands, ones that might be powerful in one or more markets, lose relevance because they aren't globally known.” 

Sharing the example of Lintas, he said, “Lintas, which was very, very strong in India and in many Asian countries like Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. But globally, it was becoming less and less relevant. So finally, they got rid of that name. To my mind, that’s a loss — because in a local market like India, it was a hugely powerful name.”

One of the key challenges that comes up with sunsetting legacy brands is conflict, especially when the network has multiple agencies handling competing brands. Managing those conflicts is tricky and important as the network has to navigate it carefully so that clients don’t get affected.

“Sometimes, these conflicts can be very real,” said Bhasin. “For example, Pepsi was with JWT in India for many years,  WPP won competing relationships in other markets. And for decades, that brand remained a client but suddenly left. So when you go through rebranding or consolidation at holding company level, managing these client conflicts becomes critical.”

In the pursuit of global uniformity, powerful local brands often become collateral damage and India has borne the brunt of that.

And that’s not a small risk. If things go wrong, it’d be like hitting delete on decades of built equity.

Same tree, new bark?

WPP’s latest consolidation under WPP Media might feel like a seismic shift, but in many ways, it’s déjà vu.

This isn’t the first time the holding giant has played brand Tetris with its agency lineup. The playbook dates back to Martin Sorrell’s era, when WPP went on a legendary acquisition spree, snapping up global powerhouses like J. Walter Thompson (JWT) and Young & Rubicam (Y&R). Over time, these heritage names were folded into newer hybrids — Wunderman Thompson, VMLY&R — until finally, in 2024, WPP rolled it all up into one massive creative monolith: VML.

But if history is any indication, these rebrands are never just about efficiency. They’re emotional, complicated, and often messy.

Shamsuddin Jasani, Co-founder and CEO, Stealth Startup, who was the CEO of Wunderman Thompson during its own rebrand journey, laid it out: “Culture isn’t something you can rebrand overnight. When legacy brands with decades of history are merged or renamed, it’s not just a logo change—it’s an identity shift. If not handled correctly it creates resistance internally and confuses clients and the team.”

He flagged three big hurdles: Getting teams with different legacies to align. Keeping morale intact amid uncertainty. And ensuring you don’t confuse clients while trying to simplify operations.

Bhasin recalled how JWT, a name that carried more than a century of legacy in India, was gradually phased out during WPP’s restructuring.

“In India, nobody had really heard of Wunderman. It hardly had any equity here. First, it became Wunderman Thompson, and then later, they dropped it entirely to become VML, which has virtually no equity in India. Meanwhile, JWT had 100 years of history behind it.”

Bhasin acknowledged that such decisions might make sense from a global standpoint, especially if the legacy brand lacked strength in other markets. But he argued that a one-size-fits-all approach often ignores local realities.

Everything gets painted with the same brush under the guise of standardisation and globalisation, and you tend to lose out.

- Ashish Bhasin

The restructure ripple effect

Beyond strategy decks and branding exercises, there’s a more delicate thread that often gets tugged—people. One of the most overlooked dimensions of agency mergers and rebrands is emotional investment.

“There is a lot of emotion attached to agency brands, particularly internally,” Bhasin said. “Agencies spend a huge amount of time crafting their branding. So when you’ve had people who’ve worked with that brand for 10-20 years, there’s emotional involvement. Whether the integration succeeds or not often depends on how that aspect is managed.”

He added that agency folks tend to devote far more time and energy to internal branding than clients ever do.

“What does a client care for? They care about getting the best people to work on their brand consistently, in a cost-effective manner. Brand A or brand B matters less to them. If you manage that part well, the client is less concerned. It becomes more of an agency people issue, which needs sensitive handling” said Bhasin.

Jasani echoed this idea. He highlighted that for most clients, the concern isn’t what the agency is called. It’s who’s still around, and whether the work still holds up.

“Most clients prefer continuity over corporate reshuffles,” Jasani said. “When the people they trust remain in place and the work stays consistent, they don’t mind what the agency is called. But the moment org charts change and relationships get disrupted, confidence dips. Rebrands promise integration and simplicity, but unless that translates into actual results, clients view it as internal housekeeping at best—and a red flag at worst.”

So what does all of this mean for ‘WPP Media’?

Maybe it’s another chapter in WPP’s long-running quest for unified global power. Maybe it’s the end of individual identities as we know them. Or maybe, as experts hint, it’s a test of how well WPP can manage change without leaving its people and legacy behind.

“Time will tell whether this consolidation effort actually works. At the end of the day, you know, even under the consolidated brand, there will be verticals. And within those verticals will be names, names of people, names of projects, names of specialities. And I do believe that is what will come to the fore. Functionality will come to the fore and not cosmetics.”- Harish Bijoor

The script may be familiar, but this time, the stakes feel higher.

Disclaimer: We reached out to WPP for a comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publishing.

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