Turkeys don\u2019t vote for Christmas. That was Sir Martin Sorrell\u2019s summation of agency trepidation to fully embracing AI in a wide-ranging talk at SXSW Sydney.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn two, three, or four years, the sensitivity to using artificial synthetic material [among consumers] will be reduced. I would say the biggest resistance point is [that] turkeys don\u2019t vote for Christmas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of fear and concern about the employment question\u2026 This is about change management.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sorrell recounted an anecdote to the crowd about a McKinsey consultant who became the CEO of Best Buy with a plan to transform it from a traditional bricks-and-mortar retailer to a digital retailer.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople keep telling him it\u2019s about change management. He spends the first six months looking at the problem and he realises it is about change management, so he changes the management\u2026 In order to get this done at scale, you have to break some eggs. That\u2019s the biggest blocker that we see, the traditional ways of doing it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn companies you have separation between ownership and control. By and large, listed companies are not entrepreneurially controlled or run. There is a resistance to change. Unless, as you see in the automotive category or in financial services, there\u2019s an external economic force that is pushing them forwards. My view is that when we get into 2026 and general economic conditions are not quite as good, maybe when we get to the American mid-terms next year when Trump is less concerned about making sure that the economy is strong, maybe we\u2019ll start to see that economic pressure intensify and then people will have no choice but to implement AI and become more efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sorrell, of course, was the founder and CEO of WPP from 1985 until 2018, becoming the longest-serving chief executive of any business on the UK\u2019s FTSE 100 in the process.<\/p>\n
He was succeeded by Mark Read, promoted internally from Wunderman (before it added the Thompson and merged with VMLY&R to create VML) and WPP Digital. In 2018, Read\u2019s announcement focused on creating a culture that attracts the best people. But he also added the following:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur industry is going through a period of structural change, not structural decline, and if we embrace that change we can look ahead to an exciting and successful future. Our mission now is to release the full potential that exists within the company for the benefit of our clients, to accelerate our transformation and simplify our offering, and to position WPP for stronger growth.\u201d<\/p>\n
In July this year, Read was replaced by Cindy Rose, a former Microsoft exec and WPP board member as CEO. Talk about change management. She had this to say upon her appointment:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many opportunities ahead for WPP. We have and continue to build market-leading AI capabilities, alongside an unrivalled reputation for creative excellence and a preeminent client list. WPP has the most brilliant, talented, creative people and I can\u2019t wait to write the company\u2019s next chapter together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rose\u2019s first significant piece of global business<\/a> was signing a five-year expansion of its partnership with Google to bring bring more cloud computing and AI technology to WPP and cultivate \u201cthe essential skills to transform marketing as we know it\u201d.<\/p>\n To be clear, that announcement wasn\u2019t that WPP would create new tools or technology, only that it would use Google\u2019s.\u00a0Justin Billingsley, former chief growth officer of Monks and former Publicis chief marketing officer, had this to say on LinkedIn<\/a> about that announcement:<\/p>\n \u201cAfter just six weeks as CEO, having sat on WPP\u2019s board for six years watching the \u2018WPP Open\u2019 narrative unfold, Rose made her first major strategic call: stop pretending we\u2019re platform builders and start being world-class implementation partners\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cShe knows the difference between owning the platform and operating on one\u201d.<\/p>\n WPP Open, he added had \u201cbeautifully integrated third-party capabilities lacking the two critical moats required for true platform differentiation in this industry: proprietary technical infrastructure and first-party data at scale\u201d.<\/p>\n At Monks (formerly Media.Monks) Sorrell has led the business to create Monks.Flow, an AI-powered marketing and workflow platform. It also spends much of its time functioning as a consulting group for brands, rather than a traditional agency. Last year, it dropped the \u201cMedia\u201d<\/a> from its name to make that proposition clearer to the market.<\/p>\n Most of the holdcos have something similar, notably WPP\u2019s Open and Publicis Groupe\u2019s Sapient. In its most recent earnings, Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun told the world that around a third of its revenues come from an AI-enabled production platform growing \u201cdouble digits\u201d.<\/p>\n