>> in 1971 bostic products make

shopping baskets. in wendy 22 is the biggest advertising firm on the planet. sometime between then and now specifically in 1989 he walked through the doors and played a confirmation. the man who made the giant had stepped down. today we speak to him about a new age of advertising and how to run a business fit for the 21st century. >> thank you so much for joining us what does it mean to be an ad leader? >> it's such an interesting phase is in it? we had just been through the pandemic. we came back ever more relevant. new advertising formats,

companies being launched, e-commerce taking off. life is changing, it changes all the time but it is changing now more than ever. >> over the last 10 years it's been incredible can you go through the same pace of change? >> i think so. 100,000 people around the world we try to have the small company, to be responsible working on individual clients. it's that trick, is in it, how we get the scale also how we operate quickly. >> other rivals are very focused on spending tech. >> what makes wpp individual's ideas. whether it be facebook or instagram creative ideas and all the things that creative p thought so i think the creativity is what makes wpp distinctive.

of course with technology, how we bring the ideas to life, where they live, where they exist is changing very quickly so it's really about what we could call traditional but a real understanding of data and technology for the future. >> your role is changing, i guess. is it still advertising or is it more advising clients and navigating with uncertain times? wpp is more an advertising company. it's important to what we do. we work in advertising but actually it's more than advertising. were we to be asked by a client how do we succeed on amazon because we are working on a television ad we had to learn new skills over the last 10 years. >> what happens in the next five hours can is it going to be amazon? is it going to be twitter? is it something else is

going to be a hot new thing? >> consumers are going to decide. we have to understand all of those platforms and help our clients understand what is most relevant and what will be most effective. was going to deliver the highest investment weather data and technology. the creative idea but also the financial returns. >> how did you end up in advertising? >> like many started by mistake. i wrote to if you business leaders of companies and i ended up working for wpp in the very early days. i never thought i would end up sitting in this seat. >> what do you like most about your job? >> i think the people. ultimately, we are a people business. we have clients, technology is for people and a lot of what my job is is to give people sort of

motivation to tell them where we are going. to encourage them to do their best work. to encourage them to collaborate but ultimately sometimes you think it's a most like a psychologist as you are a business leader sometimes. >> what is your best piece of advice? if there is a deal you need to get or an account that you need to get that you're worried will get to a rifle what is your peptide -- pep talk? >> i love pictures and spending time with teams. i like to see the work we are doing when we come together. i guess i try and put myself in the seat of the client. what is the client going to think when they see this work? how physically to resonate with consumers? >> how have clients changed over the years that you have been in advertising?

they ask for different services not? because the challenges are so much bigger? >> we never lived through a period of crises, trying to land enormous budget, vast global enterprises. they need trusted advisors and that is kind of what they are looking for through our agencies. a real sense of it we do this will be the impact be? from packaging to advertising through public relations and in many snow skills the days of old if you like an actual judgment we are much more data proven than we used to be. so a return on investment we use digital media in that way as well. much more analytic. >> what is the biggest challenge going forward? if you look at some of the technology companies, twitter, facebook, is that still where the future lies? >> the first six month of this

year wpp had grown more quickly than the average of tech and at companies, google, meta, twitter. the challenges they faced were different from the challenges that we face. we tend to have bigger, more global clients more reliant on capital funding. i think actually we are in a good position. there could be a lot of options for us. >> who do you see is your biggest rival? >> we compete with our traditional rivals. some companies try to do this work in house. it's always been comparative to people in the garage that have done over many years. for the major clients, that we service today we are in a really good position we just came off the back a year ago winning the global mandate for the coca-cola company they looked at and tested every element of what we do coming to creative work for

south africa coming to embrace the media revolution and how to embrace tiktok with every part of our business and selected us as their partner. that talks to the power we have. is it more difficult now because of the cost-of-living crisis? because of the academic downturn, do you start feeling it already? it's amazingly resilient. we can look at next year, we can worry about next year. not to worry about things i can't control. i can control the economic environment. all i can do is put wpp and our clients in the best position to navigate it. what we do is relevant. demonstrate to consumers what we are doing, working with supermarkets, showing how to

save many clients have to innovate. they have to put pricing increases. the need for marketing isn't going to go away. there is no doubt it will be challenging but i think we will come out of it as we have done before in a stronger position. >> up next claims and consumer. people asking more from different brands we look at the difference between profit and value.

>> leadership is key for any firm's success particularly in the creative industry. with more than 100,000 employees globally how do you it as a business? we continue the conversation. >>'s we look forward to 2023 do

clients ask you the most? >> how much are we going to spend next year or what the economic outlook is going to be. that is the period of great uncertainty. what we say is those that have done well should continue to support their brands. ultimately that is what they need to do as we saw even during the pandemic those who cut marketing quickly found it hard to reinstate, don't be fiscally irresponsible. to continue to invest behind your business, invest behind your brand. but how to do that in 2023 is different. how do i succeed on amazon, how do i manage my reputation? how important are the influencers were talking about? there are very different questions. >> but say i had a 10 million budget and i wanted to talk to the u.s. consumer, not alienate china, and keep my reputation intact how do i deploy that

money? >> what product? >> let's say an energy drink. >> we are working with a number of soft drink companies. you have to start with what is the product, but does it stand for and what does it mean for consumers? you have to look across the media mix. people talk about the death of television but in some way television is being reinvented. netflix is taking tv ads, disney class -- disney plus is going to accept advertising. you have to understand creativity today in a different form. we are trying to create disciplines partnering with people from hollywood. what's going on in the role of fashion, sports, those also are interesting to do. how are you going to reach the

consumer? are you going through amazon, build your own distribution channel? are all questions that wpp can help you answer. >> two i have to have a political point of view? joining to, you know, call out things that are morally wrong in my eyes? >> i don't think brands have to have a political point of view but understand what is going on in society. what consumers care about and how what they do is relevant to them. we did a study and said 82% of consumers care about how brands treat people, treat social issues, take position on those. so you have to think about energy consumption, sustainability, what is your packaging policy how do you treat your people? who are you going to sell your product to? issues are important. i'd rather think about per person. >> are those real changes?

>> i think i mean it. we have 100,000 people and they are passionate about this, they wanted overview stand on so many of these little social or political societal issues. societal probably a good definition. >> how will the change for advertises -- how would the row cap change forever tasers? >> i would like to think of it as a fitful celebration to get behind the ball and to get behind fans. clearly the prophecies around it being problematic our advice would be just focus on the football and the support. it's difficult, i agree. >> how do you get china? >> we have a big business in

china and a big business in taiwan. i was assured some of the moves with biden meeting with resident xi, it's difficult. >> something you said struck me, advise clients not to spend different bit up for you talking about is it like slots? when you go to heathrow if you business thought, you lose a slot. if you bring into much it's difficult to get it moved to somewhere? >> i know have my advertising works. i don't know which half. increasingly we know much more about what works and what doesn't work. i think we can look at digital media, what the impact is consumers buy things or they don't buy things. i think a lot of the uncertainty about industry has been taken away by the data to measure results. >> and this is online?

>> online and off-line. we have many roles to understand . >> i know i get pop-ups for stuff is my fun spying on me, mark? i talk about something and then i have advertising is that the way technology is going to go? not necessarily spying but to tell me what i want to buy. >> i think consumers expect the right to privacy. that is a nonnegotiable. something that we, try to push through all our work and everything we do clients. i think at the same time, advertising needs to be relevant. it's more relevant, it's more useful to you. so we can use data in a way to make advertising from have to do it in a way that is transparent to consumers. it doesn't misuse their data. i think it's possible. >> what is the model for the future? we did a piece of this on bloomberg when you go into a shop and i think the mannequin

is basically scanning your eyes so can't choose for and three seconds that's what pops up in the ipad. [laughter] >> the cookie was invented for many reasons. it became this kind of universal way, trucking are spying on consumers moving away from the cookie is a good thing in terms of online privacy. there is only so much targeting you can do. most of the world buy products. there is only so much targeting they need to do to be effective. things become kind of spooky, it's not helpful to our clients. i wouldn't advise them to do it. >> if it's coca-cola, everybody knows it. my energy drink that i want to sell the emptiness about. >> it has to be, did it by you on instagram did they follow you on twitter what's the value exchange? there's a value exchange

consumers will use. >> up next with recession universally forecast how does the ad industry weather the storm? work on selling and inflation.

>> the global pandemic, rampant inflation.

how is the world's biggest at firm positioning for a slogan? is there, i don't know is there an interesting client that you would like to do more ever someone you would love to have that you don't have yet? >> we do fantastic work. out of all of our clients, -- >> of course, there are no favorites. >> so far, haven't spent money on advertising, i'm sure one day they will. the japanese setback in 2009 advertising what companies do, amazon is one of the top five advertisers. when companies develop and they need to talk to consumers about what they do why they are relevant, but they have to sell ethical of those things make what we do valuable. >> the lifecycle of the business, and i guess the

ability for the business to be disrupted when is peak advertising? when is the right time to really go for it? >> but look at the advertising -- the tech companies some of the biggest advertises. they didn't start that way. we have learned that in the modern world increasingly difficult, it's increasingly difficult to do based on technology alone. brands, what people think of the company, what they stand for, what they do. that really matters. that's what we're trying to do. >> what was the most difficult day in your job? do you remember that day? >> nothing prepares you to be ceo of a public company. i worked for wpp for a long time. it wasn't a position i expected to come into. probably had a few challenges when i started. my debt was probably too high, it was quite complicated as an

organization. if i look back on that time just over four years ago i can be proud of what we have all done collectively as a team. it really has been a collective effort. >> and your predecessor was, i guess that was a challenge. >> i think when you take on a role you do it in a different way. you do it in a way that's right for you. one of the challenges was how do we integrate analog and digital? that was something that had become quite complex. create -- two big integrated agencies. integrate analog and digital. that was the first thing that was important. i think, secondly, we needed to expand beyond advertising.

we expanded e-commerce, experiences for clients. technology, we had been on that journey of reinvention of our traditional businesses but also expansion into new areas. >> is it better being bigger because you service your clients in more industries and you have more of that data does it not make that much of a difference? >> i think the biggest thing is the definition of scale. it used to be sort of buying power. we buy $60 billion of media around the world and that will give us leverage. today's scale comes from data from technology and the technology investment and the insight over multiple clients. i think scale helps. but come back to point i made earlier, our businesses day today interact with individual clients. how do we sort of create that scale without becoming the big

bureaucratic organization? >> how does advertising spending look next year in the u.s. and there is -- is there anything to roughly the u.s.? >> the u.s. is the biggest market. together the u.s. and china are about 15% of the global advertising market. expected to to be relatively resilient next year. china. should be up six or 7%. expectations next year are up. inflation is now 6%. we are used to looking at things in nominal terms and we forget to take off inflation which is sadly a little bit higher than it used to be. relatively challenging year next year but i think things have prevent, or resilient. how the year unfolds. >> do you think 2023 is the

hardest year or 2024 can be even harder? >> 2020 was a pretty difficult year. three difficult years, many reasons to be optimistic about the future for our industry. it comes back to the types of questions clients are asking as. they are much more significant, they are much more important. the success of any company is to grow. i think we at wpp our industry will be the heart of the clients growth. how do they reach new areas, how did they innovate, how do they create new brands? those are going to be just as relevant and stare and this whole digital transformation is going to continue. >> what is the secret sauce to being a great executive? do you micromanage? >> i like to empower. i can't do it all on my own need to get the best out of the people i work for so i like to

lead from the front. we are a competitive industry. whether we win or lose, i think we have to do that. i also have to create a company which is collaborative. people that want to win, people that want to collaborate. to push the boundaries. but also desire to work together because sometimes no one person has a monopoly on ideas. >> where will you be in five years? >> i think in five years things will be the same. investments in data and technology but we will be a slightly bigger business. today we are 11,000 people in india, 7000 people in china. i think those numbers will increase. they will increase more than what we have here in the u.k.. we are a u.k. company but we are a global company.

you can today is the center of our business. i don't of that will be different but i think we will be bigger in other parts of the world. >> mark, thank you so much for your time today. >> thank you. ♪

david: a lot of drama from a former u.s. presiden i