{"id":101636,"date":"2025-08-28T07:43:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T07:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/101636\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T07:43:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T07:43:16","slug":"wpp-staff-split-on-incoming-ceo-cindy-roses-first-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/101636\/","title":{"rendered":"WPP staff split on incoming CEO Cindy Rose’s first address"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Microsoft\u2019s Cindy Rose prepares to join WPP<\/a> next week as its new global chief executive officer, she has addressed staff for the first time, speaking to the challenging journey ahead.<\/p>\n

In a video shared with employees, first obtained by Adweek<\/a>, Rose acknowledged WPP\u2019s difficult first half of 2025, while urging staff to feel excited about the company\u2019s future.\u00a0The London-listed group reported sharp revenue declines earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, I won\u2019t sugarcoat this. We have a lot of hard work ahead, and of course it won\u2019t be easy,\u201d Rose said in the video.<\/p>\n

Q2<\/a> total revenue was down 10.4% to AU$7.05 billion (\u00a33.42 billion), and revenue less pass-through costs was down 12.6%. On a like-for-like basis, stripping out currency movements, acquisitions, and disposals, the declines were 4% and 5.8% respectively.<\/p>\n

ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

H1 revenue was therefore down 7.8% to AU$13.74 million (\u00a36.63 million). To curb costs, WPP has shaved its headcount by 3.7%, or approximately 7,000 employees, since the start of the year. Staff costs in H1 were therefore down 7.5%, while bonuses were cut, dividends halved, and a strategic review announced \u2014 one that Rose will now lead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

WPP sits well below the pack<\/p>\n

Announced in July<\/a>, Rose will officially begin at WPP on September 1. She will succeed Mark Read, who in June,\u00a0shared that he would hand over the reins<\/a>, after a three-decade career with the holdco. He served as CEO for seven years, having\u00a0replaced Sir Martin Sorrell\u00a0<\/a>after his\u00a0abrupt resignation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when I think about the assets that we have as a company, the brilliant people, we have the multi-award winning creative work that we produce, our beloved agency brands, our amazing clients, our global reach, our world leading technology capabilities. Wow. Like I cannot help but feel excited about our future,\u201d Rose said.<\/p>\n

Her message drew mixed reactions across WPP\u2019s Australian network, where staff have been navigating client losses, cost cuts, and redundancies.<\/p>\n

One former executive, who wished to remain anonymous, welcomed her \u201ccandid tone\u201d. They described her remarks as \u201cenergising\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a lot of corporate spin in the past, so it\u2019s refreshing to see someone acknowledge the reality,\u201d they told Mumbrella. \u201cI also appreciate that she\u2019s still managing to project optimism. That balance is exactly what WPP needs right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

A current WPP staffer, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: \u201cThe message sounded positive, but that alone won\u2019t fix the problems. People are worried about job cuts and shrinking bonuses. So until we see a clear strategy and real stability, speeches like this don\u2019t do much to ease concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rose has invited employees globally to a town hall on September 4, where she will outline the holdco\u2019s \u201cdirection of travel\u201d moving forward.<\/p>\n

Closing her message, she said: \u201cUntil then, I wanna really thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your commitment, your tireless work, like what you do every day to deliver impact for our clients is just extraordinary, and I cannot wait to get out there and spend time with you and your clients to get to know you better, to learn from you and to support your success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cindy Rose<\/p>\n

Read Rose\u2019s speech in full below:<\/p>\n

\u201cHello everyone. I\u2019m Cindy, and I\u2019m so incredibly proud and honored to be joining WPP on September 1st as your CEO. You know, over the years I\u2019ve been lucky enough to experience WPP from many different angles. <\/p>\n

During my time at Vodafone, Virgin, and Microsoft, I was a client of Grey, VML, and Wunderman Thompson. During my time at Microsoft, I was also a strategic technology partner to WPP, helping the company embrace cloud and AI technology to drive our transformation. <\/p>\n

And for the past six years, I\u2019ve been a member of the WPP Board of Directors. So you could say I\u2019ve been a mega fan of WPP for more than 15 years now, which is why I feel so privileged and inspired to work together with all of you to write WPPs next chapter, and our next chapter will be fantastic.<\/p>\n

Now, I won\u2019t sugarcoat this. We have a lot of hard work ahead, and of course it won\u2019t be easy. But when I think about the assets that we have as a company, the brilliant people, we have the multi-award winning creative work that we produce, our beloved agency brands, our amazing clients, our global reach, our world leading technology capabilities. Wow. Like I cannot help but feel excited about our future. <\/p>\n

So I\u2019d like to invite you all to join me for a global town hall live from New York on September 4th, so that I can share a bit more about our direction of travel. You\u2019ll be able to watch it together at some of our campuses around the world, and of course, we\u2019ll record it for on-demand viewing so that no one from international time zones need to stay up in the middle of the night. We don\u2019t want that. <\/p>\n

You\u2019ll all have an opportunity to ask me questions on the day, live in the room, and on online during the town hall Q&A, or if you\u2019d prefer, please send your questions to me beforehand at askcindy@wpp.com. <\/p>\n

Until then, I wanna really thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your commitment, your tireless work, like what you do every day to deliver impact for our clients is just extraordinary, and I cannot wait to get out there and spend time with you and your clients to get to know you better, to learn from you and to support your success. <\/p>\n

I am, as you can probably tell, super excited to co-create the new WPP together.<\/p>\n

Thank you and see you in September.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tKeep up to date with the latest in media and marketing\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Microsoft\u2019s Cindy Rose prepares to join WPP next week as its new global chief executive officer, she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,73860,73861,73862],"class_list":["post-101636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-cindy-rose","tag-mark-read","tag-wpp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}