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By Michael Bürgi • March 7, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
WPP, no stranger to financial strains as of late, is facing another major headache. Though it’s not decided yet, one of its biggest spending advertisers — Coca-Cola — is considering a new partner for its biggest market in North America, according to three sources with knowledge of the account.
If Coca-Cola does opt for a change, Publicis Groupe is the frontrunner to handle its media dollars in North America, which is reportedly worth $620 million in the U.S., according to Comvergence data — but likely closer to $700 million including Canada, according to those sources.
Even if the account were to change, WPP isn’t being shut out entirely. It remains Coca-Cola’s global marketing partner under the OpenX model, which includes media and creative. And while the media account in North America is in flux, those same sources say the region’s creative business is expected to stay put.
All of the involved parties — Coca-Cola, WPP/GroupM, Publicis and MediaSense, which is said to be helping Coca-Cola with its decision — declined comment for this story.
Still, according to one agency exec at another holding company, Publicis has been “heavily prospecting” Coca-Cola to win the business from WPP, which has endured some punishing losses over the last year, undergone an organizational shakeup at its media buying arm GroupM and tougher competition from rival holdcos.
The source said Publicis is most likely offering to reduce Coca-Cola’s cost for services.
Losing Coca-Cola would clearly add to those woes for WPP, but it would be mitigated to some degree by the fact that it has scooped up lucrative media accounts in North America including Johnson & Johnson’s U.S. and Canadian media in December.
Coca-Cola’s shift comes at a crucial point in WPP’s history. It reported like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs, an indicator of organic agency growth, decline 1% year-on-year. That drop was steeper than analysts expected, and made worse by a murky outlook for the year. So much so that WPP’s share price tumbled to a four-year low. One saving grace was GroupM, which did grow 2.7% in revenue in 2024, including 2.4% in Q4.
WPP CEO Mark Read has placed his faith in GroupM’s new leadership under global CEO Brian Lesser, who replaced Christian Juhl last summer. And at least one observer sees results heading in the right direction.
“I think that [GroupM is] in the middle of a surge — they’re in the middle of a comeback, with new leadership [in Lesser] and new structure that’s centralized in a way that the prior GroupM leadership was either not interested in or willing to centralize,” said Jay Pattisall, vp and senior agency analyst at Forrester in a recent story. “So I think that GroupM is going to be able to deliver for WPP, but only over time.”
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