francine: in 1971, wire and plastic products, plc, made shopping baskets. in 2022, wpp, as it is now known, is the biggest advertising firm on the planet.

sometime between then and now, specifically in 1989, mark read walked through the doors and played a starring role in that transformation. in 2018, read became chief executive of a firm in crisis. the man who had made the giant, martin sorrell, had stepped down. today, we speak to mark read about a new age of advertising and how to run a business fit for the 21st century. mark, thank you so much for joining us on "leaders with lacqua." what does it mean being an ads man, ad leader in 2022? mark: [laughs] well, i mean, our industry is at such an interesting phase, isn't it? we've just been through the pandemic, we have come out, i think, in many ways, ever more relevant. but we face a whole period of continued innovation in our industry, with new advertising formats, new digital companies being launched, e-commerce taking off. our industry is changing and it changes all the time. but it is changing now, i think,

more than ever. francine: but if you look at the pace of change over the last 10 years, i mean, it has been incredible. mark: yeah. francine: can you go through the same pace of change in the next 10 years? mark: i think so. i mean, look, we are a big company. we have 100,000 people around the world. we try to also have the heart, if you like, of a small company, to be very responsive. we have people day-to-day working on individual clients, working on client briefs. so i think it is that trick, isn't it? how we get the scale of a big company, but also how we operate quickly and nimbly. francine: other rivals are very focused on spending in tech. what is the future for wpp? mark: well, i think what makes wpp special is creativity. it's ideas. you know, without ideas, there is nothing on these tech platforms. what would there be on facebook or instagram or youtube without, you know, creative work and creative ideas and all of the things that creative people make? i think that creativity is what makes wpp distinctive and where we want to invest. now, of course, with technology, how we bring those ideas to life, where they live, where they exist, that's changing very quickly. so it is really about, sort of,

building up what we could call the traditional skills, if you like, of the past, but blending them with a real understanding of data and technology that you need in the future. francine: your role is changing, i guess. is it still just pure advertising, or is it more advising clients and kind of navigating these uncertain times? mark: well, wpp is much more an advertising company today than we used to be. now, clearly, advertising is important to what we do. when you start with that, and the customer says, "what do you do?", i say, "we work in advertising." actually, wpp is much more than an advertising company. we are as likely to be asked by a client, you know, "how do i succeed on amazon" as we are, "what do you think of this television ad?" so, we have had to learn a tremendous number of new skills over the last 10 years, as you say. francine: so what happens in the next five years? is it going to be amazon? is it going to be twitter? is there something else that will be the hot new thing? mark: one good thing about wpp, we do not need to make those decisions. consumers will decide and we need to be where the consumers are. so it is our job, i think, to understand all of those platforms and help our clients understand what is most relevant, where can they reach

their consumers most effectively, what is going to deliver the higher return on investment? you know, we are very data and technology and fact-driven today. so, it is both the creative ideas but also the financial returns that are important. francine: and, how did you end up in advertising? mark: sort of by mistake, really. [laughter] francine: a good mistake or a bad mistake? mark: well, i left university. i didn't know what i wanted to do. i wrote to a few, sort of, business leaders and companies. i ended up working at wpp in the very early days. and, i think, when i started, i never thought i would end up sitting in this seat, if you like, at all. no. francine: what do you like most about your job? mark: i think the people. i mean, ultimately, we are a people business. we have clients who are people, we have creatives who are people, we have technologists who are people. and a lot of what my job is as ceo of the company is to give those people, sort of, motivation, to tell them where we are going, to encourage them to come up and do their best work, to encourage them to collaborate.

but ultimately the job is as much -- sometimes i think you are almost a psychologist, you know, as you are a business leader, i think, sometimes. francine: and so what is your best piece of advice? i don't know if it is psychological terms, but if there is a deal that you need to get or an account you need to get that you are worried will go to your rival, what is your pep talk like? mark: my pep talk? well, i love pitches. i love leading from the front, if you like, and spending times with teams. i love to see the work we are doing. when we pitch a new business is often when we come together. so, i guess i try to put myself in the seat of the client. you know, what is the client going to think when they see this work? are they going to be excited? is it going to turn their brand around? how is it going to resonate with their consumers? so as much as possible, i try to play that role. francine: so, how have clients changed, actually, over the years that you have been in advertising? do they ask for different services now, because the challenges are so much bigger? mark: i think clients have a tough time, don't they? you know, we've never lived

through a period of so many crises. they're trying to manage enormous budgets, vast, global enterprises. they need trusted advisors, and i think that's kind of, in a sense, why they are looking to wpp and to our agencies and to our people to bring, you know, a real sense of, if we do this, what will the impact be? you know, from packaging through to advertising through to public relations through to design. and there are many, many new skills. you know, the days of old, if you like, you know, a lot of this was a matter of judgment. now, we are much more data-driven than we used to be. we look at market research figures, we measure the return on investment. we use digital media in that way as well. so, they have become, i think, much more analytically-driven than perhaps they used to be. francine: what is the biggest challenge going forward? is it, if you look at some of the technology companies, twitter, facebook, is that still where the future lies? mark: well, it was interesting, you know, in the first six months of this year, if you look at wpp, we have actually grown more quickly than the average of the four tech companies. google, meta, snap, and twitter. so, in a funny way, the challenges they faced are somewhat different from the challenges that we've faced. you know, we tend to have bigger, more global clients.

we are not so reliant on venture capital-funded startups. so i think we are actually coming into the future in quite a good position. and actually there are going to be a lot of opportunities for us. francine: who do you see as your biggest rival? mark: you know, we compete with our traditional rivals, we compete with the consulting companies. we compete with some clients that try to do some of this work in-house. so, but the great thing is it has always been competitive. two people in a garage could start up an agency. they have done over many years. but i think, for the major clients that we service today, we are in a really, we are in a really good position. you know, we just came off the back, about a year ago, winning the global mandate for the coca-cola company. and they looked at and tested every element of what we do as a business, from coming to develop great creative work in china or india or south africa, to, can we embrace, you know, the media revolution? can we show them how to partner with facebook and google and how to embrace tiktok and every part of our business? and selected us as their partner. i think that talks to the sort of power we have and the scale

that we have. francine: is it more difficult now because of the cost-of-living crisis, because of the, you know, economic downturn? do you start feeling it already? mark: look, i think, as i speak to you today, i think clients spend is amazingly resilient, actually. and, you know, we can look at next year, and we can worry about next year. you know, and it is easy -- i've sort of learned not to worry about things i can't control. i can't control the economic environment. all i can do is put wpp and our clients in the best position to navigate it. and when i look at it like that, i think, well, actually, what we do is super relevant. clients have got to demonstrate to consumers what they are doing. we are working with supermarkets to demonstrate how they can help customers save money. clients have got to innovate. they have got to, in many cases, put price increases through. so i think the need for marketing isn't going to go away. and there is no doubt the next 12 months will be challenging,

but i think we will come out of it, as we have done before, in a stronger position. francine: up next, client and consumer. the ad man must speak to both. with people asking evermore from brands, we look at the balance between profit and values. ♪

i think all of those things make what we do valuable. francine: i mean, it is interesting. if you look at the lifecycle of a business. and, i guess, the ability for that business to be disrupted, when is peak advertising moment? when is the right time to really go for it? mark: well, just look at the

technology companies. google, amazon, apple are some of the world's biggest advertisers, and they certainly didn't start that way. so, i think that we have learned that, in a modern world, differentiation is increasingly difficult. it is increasingly difficult to do just based on technology or product feature alone. but actually, brands, what people think of a company, what they stand for, what they do, that really matters. and i think that is what we are trying to do through advertising. francine: what was the most difficult day in your job? do you remember that day? mark: probably the first day. [laughter] i mean, nothing prepares you to be ceo of a public company. you know, i had worked for wpp for a long time. as i say, it was not a position i expected to come into. if we face it, the company had a few challenges when i started. we had not grown. our debt was probably too high. we were quite complicated as an organization. and so, if i look back now on that time, just over four years ago, i am pretty proud of what we have all done, you know, collectively, as a team. and it really has been, you know, a collective effort. it is quite an interesting thing, i think.

francine: yeah, and your predecessor was sir martin sorrell, so that was also, i guess, a challenge. mark: well, he had been at the company a long time, but i think when you take on a role, you do it in a different way. don't you? you do it in a way that is right for you. and i looked at where we were. and i think that one of the challenges was, how do we integrate analog and digital? right? because that is sort of something that had become quite complex. so we brought together two agencies to create an bml y&r that could help clients across the full range of markets to integrate analog and digital. that was the first thing that was important. i think, secondly, really wanted to expand what we did beyond advertising. we were just in the advertising box. we weren't going to grow. so, we expanded off into e-commerce, into commerce, into building experiences for clients, and much more deeply into technology. and we have been on the journey, really, of reinvention of our traditional businesses, but also expansion into new areas, so the company can grow its topline. francine: is it better being bigger, because you service your clients in more industries and you have more of that data? or does it not make that much of

a difference? mark: well, i think what is interesting is the definition of scale and the competitive advantage of that scale has changed. it used to be sort of buying power and buying muscle, you know. we would buy $60 billion of media around the world, that would give us leverage with media owners we'd use on behalf of our clients to get better prices. today's scale comes from data and technology and leveraging that technology investment and that data and that insight over multiple clients. so, i think scale helps, but coming back to the point i made earlier, we have also got to be nimble and smart and quick, because our business is day-to-day interactions with individual clients. so, that is the challenge, how we sort of create that scale without becoming, you know, a big, dare i say, bureaucratic organization, which is the last thing i want to run. francine: mark, how does advertising spending look like next year? so, in the u.s., and again, is there really anything to rival the u.s. in terms of consumer spending or advertising spending?

mark: advertising, well, the u.s. is the biggest market. together, the u.s. and china are about 50%-plus of the global advertising market. heading in different directions. you know, the u.s. expected to be relatively resilient next year. china, we are not sure. maybe another tough year. global ad spend should be up 6% or 7%. expectations next year are up 5% to 6%, so slightly slower. but don't forget, inflation is now 6%. so, you know, we're used to looking at things in nominal terms, but we forget to take off inflation, which sadly is a little bit higher than it used to be. so, i think it is a relatively, challenging year next year, but i think that things have proven a lot more resilient than people expect. so we will have to see how the year unfolds. francine: do you think 2023 is the hardest year, or 2024 could be even harder, if there is a lag effect in some of these inflation numbers? mark: i don't know, i mean, look, 2020 was a pretty difficult year. [laughter] so, we have gone through difficult years.

there are many reasons to be optimistic, i think, about the future for our industry. it comes back to the types of questions the clients are asking us. they are much more significant. they are much more important. you know, the secret success of any company is to grow. and i think that we, wpp, and our industry, more broadly, can be really at the heart of our clients' growth. you know, how do they succeed with consumers? how do they reach them in new areas? how do they innovate? how do they create new brands? those questions are going to be just as relevant next year. you know, this whole digital transformation is going to continue. so these things are not going to go away. francine: so what is the secret sauce of being a great chief executive? do you, do you empower? do you micromanage? like, what are you like as a chief executive? mark: i like to empower. i mean, i can't do it all on my own. and, as i say, i need to get the best out of the people i work for. so, i like to sort of lead a little bit from the front, spending time with clients, spending time in pitches. you know, we are a competitive industry. we are in pitches day-to-day. we win or lose business. so, i think that you have to do that. but i also have to create a

company which is collaborative. i think there is a tension between people that want to win, people that want to collaborate, but that is what we are trying to do, you know? the desire to do great work, to really push the boundaries for clients, but also desire to work together, because sometimes -- no one person has a monopoly on the ideas. francine: where will you be in five years? mark: i think that in five years we might, we will look different and the same. things will be the same. i think it's our belief in creativity, you know, investments in data and technology, but we will probably be a slightly bigger business. you know, today we are 11,000 people in india, 6000 people in brazil, 7000 people in china. i think those numbers will increase. they will probably increase faster than the number of people we have here in the u.k. or u.s. we are a u.k. company in a sense, but we are really a global company that is headquartered in the u.k. and the u.k. today is only 12% of our business. you know, i don't know that will be wildly different. but i think we will be bigger in other parts of the world. francine: mark, thank you so much for your time today. mark: thanks, francine.

thank you. ♪

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