WPP CEO Mark Read told investors and analysts today that the company’s media arm GroupM is not as successful on the new business front in the U.S. as it needs to be going forward. 

The media unit is still facing headwinds from client losses in 2023 like Shell and others.

Its growth in the second quarter of this year was 1.4% with first-half growth of 1.9%.  

Asked what the problems were, Read replied that the “complexity of the organization” is a major issue and one that sometimes prevents putting the best people on potentially lucrative new opportunities. A “fragmented” technology platform has also hindered performance.  

A restructuring is underway that is designed to address those and other issues, said Read. In addition, Open Media Studio — the end-to-end media delivery platform built by Choreograph and available to GroupM teams as part of WPP Open—will help as well. 

And new leadership is also expected to help drive growth at the organization, both at the very top and in regions like China, which will be down double-digits for the full year on an organic growth basis.  

The company recently announced that Brian Lesser is rejoining the company as Global CEO of GroupM starting next month (succeeding Christian Juhl, who is taking on a corporate role at WPP).  

Asked what Lesser brings to the table, Read replied that he understands both product and technology and is very familiar with the organization, having worked there for 10 years, including a stint as CEO GroupM North America before departing to AT&T to run its ad business in 2017.  

And Lesser has a good relationship with both clients and Read—the duo worked closely together when Lesser was at GroupM during the first go-round. His combined skills are “what GroupM needs,” said Read.  

A question mark, Read said, is to what extent principle-based “black box media models” will help GroupM, or not, particularly in the U.S. Given the lack of transparency with such models, Read suggested, they won’t be much of a remedy in the region, where the firm is “much less” active than some competitors.