WPP is poised to take over Coca-Cola’s global media, data and technology business, a win that would give CEO Cindy Rose a high-profile proof point in her first year of restructuring the holding company. But the way the pitch ended is just as important as the outcome.
A big win with an asterisk
Publicis was the only other major agency group in contention and left before the process was complete. That left WPP as the sole remaining candidate rather than the winner of a closed head-to-head. A source close to the competing team told Digiday the contest was close before Publicis walked away.
Rose’s first year has produced a similar pattern: credible new business momentum without the financial recovery to match. WPP topped J.P. Morgan’s net new business rankings across several measurement windows, and the list of wins includes Airbnb, Heineken, Wendy’s, Just Eat, Asahi, Michael Hill and Estée Lauder. Yet like-for-like net sales still declined 4.7% in the first half of the year.
What the Coke math shows
The Coca-Cola relationship is not a straightforward expansion. Coke moved its North America media account to Publicis without a pitch in February 2025. Now Publicis has left Coke to pursue PepsiCo’s global media business. WPP will not chase the North American piece, and the numbers explain why.
- Coca-Cola’s global media spend is estimated at $2.5 billion to $2.6 billion, with North America around $800 million, according to COMvergence.
- North America represented only about 5% of what WPP handled for Coca-Cola, by WPP’s own admission.
- WPP’s Coke scope already spans media, data, creative production and AI tooling built over nearly five years.
- The holding company’s first-half like-for-like net sales fell 4.7% despite the new business wins.
Rose appears to be choosing which battles fit the recovery rather than saying yes to every available account. That is a discipline Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun can exercise with less scrutiny, because Publicis has spent years proving it can walk away without losing market confidence. WPP is still in the stage where a pass is read as a risk signal.
The platform gap behind the turnaround
WPP Open, the AI-powered operating system built to unify agency profit-and-loss units around major clients, remains a work in progress. It was designed for bespoke client instances such as Open X for Coke and Open Mind for Nestlé. In practice, agencies continued running their own P&Ls and systems, so a shared workspace could look nearly empty depending on which agency was doing the work.
The self-serve layer, Open Pro, hit a different barrier: WPP never built a central transformation team to help clients adopt it. That work stayed inside individual agencies, which had little incentive to push self-serve tools that could cannibalize their own revenue. Ownership of the platform ended up split across product, technology, data and AI teams without a single strategy tying them together.
Rose has since restructured the group around media, creation, production and enterprise solutions. The next test is whether clients feel that change in their daily service. One WPP client told Digiday: “I’m not bothered necessarily by who’s leading WPP so much as I care I’m getting a good service on a daily basis, which I get.”
Why this matters for marketing leaders
For brands and media buyers, the shuffle is a reminder that agency wins are not the same as agency health. A holding company can top new business rankings and still post declining net sales. The more useful signal is whether a new account win translates into stable teams, integrated tools and better performance for existing clients.
WPP still faces the $100 million whistleblower suit from a former GroupM executive and a securities class action tied to disclosures from previous leadership. Those outcomes could affect the share price, even as the operating model catches up. The Coca-Cola result gives Rose a headline to point to, but WPP is still moving rather than arriving.
Source: Digiday
