Sorrell On Strategy, Publicom And The 'Washington Kindle'

WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell said Monday that the company is accelerating its efforts to generate revenue in fast growing markets and from digital services.

In a LinkedIn post—his first as part of the business social network’s “Influencers” program—Sorrell said WPP now intended to generate “at least” 40% to 45% of its revenue from fast growing markets and digital within five years. Up to now the goal had been 35% to 40%.

Sorrell also took a thinly-veiled shot at the proposed Publicom merger, suggesting that “others in the industry may take strategic leaps backwards for various odd or inconsistent or contradictory reasons. We’ll remain focused, actually even more focused on our long-established and consistent strategy, on future development and on accelerating implementation.”

Sorrell said the WPP strategy is simple: “new markets, new media, data investment management and …horizontality.” The last one means getting all 165,000 WPP employees to “work together even more effectively for clients.” All four objectives, he said, are in response to changing “general trends in client behavior.”

advertisement

advertisement

Media continues to change at warp speed, said Sorrell, as evidenced by the recent acquisition of the Washington Post by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “We’ll have to wait to see how the Washington Kindle fares, both commercially and editorially, and whether an Amazon treatment can turn analog dimes into more than digital pennies – but the point is made: a new breed of media owner has very much arrived.”

Next story loading loading..