WPP CEO Cindy Rose: All employees must become 'AI superusers'

In the days and weeks since WPP announced Cindy Rose would replace Mark Read as CEO, much has been made of her dual UK/US citizenship and her deep experience at large American brands (Microsoft and Disney). 

Industry experts and observers suggested that if she was going to execute a turnaround of the struggling advertising colossus, winning – and winning big – in the US was crucial.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that yesterday (4 September) on her fourth day on the job, Rose was at WPP’s US headquarters at 3 World Trade Center in New York City to host a global town hall for its more than 100,000 employees. 

While WPP declined to provide any comment on her presentation, one executive said that so far Rose has delivered a “positive first impression”, and is a “refreshing change” from her predecessor Read. “She’s charismatic, and said all the right things so far, though there’s been no strategic bombshells… yet,” they said.

In a follow-up note to WPP staff sent after the town hall, Rose struck an optimistic note. She wrote: “I believe the best of WPP is yet to come, and I want to work together to write the next chapter in WPP’s history, a new WPP."

In a video introduction shared with WPP staff last week, Rose indirectly acknowledged the recent struggles at WPP –confirmed in a profit warning to investors on 9 July – though she did so with a bright and cheerful demeanour. 

She said: “Now I won’t sugar-coat this: we have a lot of hard work ahead and of course it won’t be easy. But when I think of the assets that we have as a company, the brilliant people we have, the multi-award-winning creative work that we produce, our beloved agency brands, our amazing clients, our global reach, our world-leading technology capabilities – wow, I cannot help but feel excited about our future.”

In her note to staff this week, she said both WPP and the industry are at an “exciting inflection point”. The leadership team are working on the strategy to respond now, she said and they will share more in the weeks ahead, but added that the strategy will be grounded in three core principles of ”putting people first,” ”winning for clients,” and most importantly, “harnessing AI”. 

She added: “We’ve made significant investments in building market-leading AI capabilities and solutions, and we need to lead with these in every client conversation. We all need to level up our skills and become AI superusers and embrace these tools to power our daily work, to deliver efficiency and quality to our clients and delight them with cutting-edge innovation, creativity and business outcomes.

“If we execute well on these three core principles, we’ll offer our clients an unrivalled combination of passionate, talented people who care deeply about their success, a simpler client proposition and go-to-market powered by the best AI capabilities in the market. This is how we win."

A version of this article first appeared on Campaign Canada