Can Cindy Rose be the missing piece WPP needs?

When WPP named Cindy Rose as its next Chief Executive Officer, the news sparked equal parts surprise and speculation. An executive with stints at Microsoft, Vodafone, Virgin Media and The Walt Disney Company, Rose is not the traditional agency insider. Her background is rooted in law, media, and enterprise tech, not Cannes-winning campaigns or creative brainstorms. And yet, that may be exactly the point.

As she prepares to take charge on September 1, 2025, Rose inherits an organisation undergoing major transition marked by client losses, falling revenues, a battered share price, and what many insiders describe as a “crisis of identity.”

“This might be the clearest indicator that WPP no longer thinks of itself as a creative solution company,” said Naresh Gupta, Co-Founder of Bang in the Middle. “To get a technology salesperson to run WPP may mean a sea change in the way the company looks at itself. Startups call it a pivot; WPP is too large to pivot.”

But pivot or not, change is inevitable and urgent.

The CEO’s to-do list

The new CEO steps into one of the most turbulent phases in WPP’s history. Its share price plunged to a five-year low. The May rebranding of GroupM to WPP Media was seen by many as a move lacking deeper structural reform. And, with Publicis overtaking WPP to become the world’s top ad holding group, experts share that the urgency to course-correct is at an all-time high.

“The new chief has a massive task ahead, its share price is falling, its revenue is falling, the client roster is thin and leadership position has been finally usurped by Publicis for good,” Gupta said. “I don't think Cindy Rose will have to learn much; it’s WPP that has to change to what she wants the agency to change to.”

And that change will likely revolve around three pressing challenges: redefining creativity in the age of AI, restoring client trust, and rebuilding internal culture with purpose at its core.

Furthermore, Dr. Sandeep Goyal, Chairman of Rediffusion, believes that for Rose to succeed, she must address the deep structural bloat within the organisation.

“Too many agencies, too many people. It has worked so far because many relationships have endured but in a VUCA world, nothing can be taken for granted,” he said.

He believes the talent overhaul needs to start in India.

“Cindy needs to hire people like herself in India too - with tech orientation and mindsets that are not just focused on scam campaigns at Cannes and GoaFest,” he added. “Too much energy spent on false peer accolades. None of her agencies has even a rudimentary understanding of AI.”

However, Dr. Goyal sees her outsider lens as a potential strength.

“Cindy Rose is an outsider to advertising. But that may be her singular advantage—she can wake up an industry in deep inertia with new perspectives, new technology, and new energy.”

Her success will depend on how quickly she can translate urgency into action and vision into structure. At the heart of that future is a delicate balancing act between creativity and technology.

The industry’s tug of war between creativity and technology

The biggest tension Rose must address? The ongoing debate between creativity and technology, a debate that’s polarising the global agency world.

“There is a big dilemma and debate in the agency business when it comes to creativity versus technology,” said Harish Bijoor, brand strategy consultant and founder of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc. “One of the key roles Cindy Rose needs to play is to mediate and to intermediate in this issue.”

He believes this isn’t a case of evolving mindsets, it’s about replacing them. “There’s huge resistance in the agency business. Changing mindsets will not do. Possibly, changing people is the issue at hand.”

This suggests a shake-up may be on the cards yet again, starting with talent that’s fit for a tech-forward, platform-agnostic future. But tech alone can’t be the answer. Creativity remains the soul of the agency business. The task for Rose will be to integrate the two, without losing either.

A purpose-led comeback

Cindy Rose steps in at a time when WPP is already knee-deep in transformation. This isn’t just a change in leadership; it’s a company undergoing a mid-restructure. The rebranding of GroupM to WPP Media raised deeper questions: Is this change symbolic of strategy, or just surface-level optics? And more crucially, what does WPP stand for anymore?

For Bijoor, the name change is more than a marketing decision. “The need for WPP Media is to look at a very strong and clear positioning stance that holds water for the next 8 to 10 years,” he said. “The key issue would be to run towards being a purpose-driven agency and organisation by and large, as opposed to a target or a vision and mission-driven firm. Now discovering purpose seems to be the big big issue at hand.”

While Bijoor emphasises purpose, others see a larger structural shift as essential to realising that purpose.

For WPP to move beyond surface-level rebrands, it must restructure its entire client relationship approach. “Given WPP’s strength as a network with diverse expertise across communication, media, tech and data, WPP should, as a way forward, evolve into a true end-to-end business partner—one that not only delivers creative, media, tech, data solutions, but shapes business strategy, owns outcomes, and drives growth across the full customer and commercial journey,” said Ronita Mitra, Founder & CEO of Brand Eagle Consulting.

According to Mitra, this would require WPP to evolve beyond its legacy of fragmented agency structures and build integrated, client-centric teams comprising diverse specialists, strategists, creatives, technologists, data scientists, and media experts, working with a shared commercial mandate. “This means influencing not just marketing plans, but core decisions around brand, experience, revenue, and innovation—earning a seat at the CEO’s table, not just the CMO’s,” she added.

Mitra also believes the leadership model itself needs a rethink. “WPP should explore embedding a layer of business owners at the network level: leaders who act as client-side partners, understand the full spectrum of business KPIs, and orchestrate transformation with speed and accountability. There is an opportunity to reposition WPP as a value-driving, enterprise-level partner enabled and delivered by connected, data-driven ecosystems.”

In other words, the rebrand needs more than a new label; it needs meaning. Without a clearly articulated purpose, internal morale and external perception will continue to slide. 

And in a year marked by the exits of Coca-Cola, Mars, and Paramount, client losses appear to signal more than just competitive setbacks; experts share that it points to deeper concerns about the group’s positioning and value proposition.

“WPP has had a rocky relationship with loss of clients, and I think the best way to rebuild trust and get lost clients back, apart from of course attracting newer ones is to really put together the key purpose statement of WPP totally interlinked to the future of agency relationships rather than the past or the present,” Bijoor added.

Clients today are no longer looking for just tactical execution. They seek values, partnership, and meaningful long-term engagement. The agencies that succeed are the ones that stand for something more than media rates and margin math.

The rebrand to WPP Media may have been intended as a consolidation play, but without an anchoring belief system and long-term vision, it risks becoming yet another superficial change in a long line of restructures.

Fixing that starts at the top, with Cindy Rose, and the clarity she brings to WPP’s evolving identity.

Can India still anchor WPP’s growth?

As Cindy Rose prepares to take charge of WPP globally, few markets will demand her attention as urgently, or as delicately, as India. Long considered one of the holding group’s strongest regions in terms of revenue, growth, and scale, India has been central to WPP’s global narrative. But experts share that dominance is now showing signs of strain.

“There is a reputation challenge they are facing,” said Gupta. “The price-fixing cartelisation case is something that they need to settle. This is where they will lose a lot of their goodwill, even with the most long-standing clients.”

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) probe into alleged cartelisation by media agencies has cast a shadow on the trust WPP has historically enjoyed in the market. For a company whose strength lies in client relationships, any erosion of that goodwill could have a ripple effect far beyond individual contracts.

India has always been a unique market for WPP. Its agencies, from Ogilvy and GroupM to Mindshare and Wunderman Thompson, have traditionally held a dominant position. But as Gupta pointed out, that dominance is now increasingly being challenged. “India is a slightly different market for WPP because of its dominant position, but this is now under threat. For any network to grow, the only target they have is WPP, so therein lies the challenge.”

In a highly competitive, margin-conscious market like India, where legacy networks face pressure from nimble independents, digital-first players, and global challengers, WPP’s position at the top is no longer a given. For Cindy Rose, the challenge will be two-fold: defending market share, and resetting WPP’s image with Indian clients and regulators.

Yet despite these headwinds, experts argue that India holds tremendous potential, not just as a market to protect, but as a testing ground for WPP’s future direction.

“India is in a social tumult of sorts,” said Bijoor. “To an extent, what works in India will work elsewhere, and it's not necessarily the other way around. I do believe Rose needs to look at India to be that crucible, that laboratory, which is going to guide the future of the business, not only within India, but across the world.”

For Rose, the opportunity lies in harnessing India’s complexity, not streamlining it into a global template. If WPP can successfully experiment here, with new structures, AI-enabled services, and purpose-led brand building, it may offer a blueprint for other emerging and mature markets alike.

But that begins with regaining trust. Settling regulatory issues, reinforcing local leadership, and demonstrating cultural fluency will be critical first steps. India may have once been WPP’s most secure market. Now, it is its most closely watched one.

Cindy Rose’s appointment is more than a leadership change; it’s a bet. A bet that a tech-savvy outsider, with enough proximity to the business but distance from its legacy, can rewrite the WPP playbook.

But to succeed, she must do more than just lead WPP into the future. She must redefine what that future looks like. Fixing WPP won’t just be about plugging leaks or reversing losses. It will be about answering a deeper question that many in the industry are asking: What is WPP now?

If she can answer that, not just for investors and employees, but for clients, she just might lead the agency not into its next chapter, but into its next identity.