WPP Media retains Reckitt India media mandate, adds e-commerce scope

WPP Media has retained Reckitt India’s integrated media mandate and expanded its remit to include e-commerce media, reinforcing a partnership that has been in place since 2023. The renewed assignment keeps WPP Media at the centre of Reckitt’s media strategy in India at a time when marketers are increasingly demanding tighter integration between brand-building and commerce-led performance.

Under the updated mandate, Wavemaker will continue to handle media strategy, planning and buying for Reckitt India, while also leading the newly awarded e-commerce media responsibilities. The brief brings mainline media, digital and commerce under a single operating model, reflecting the growing need for consistency across touchpoints as consumer journeys become more fragmented and retail media gains scale.

The scope expansion is not limited to India. WPP Media has also been appointed to manage media planning and buying for Reckitt across 21 European markets, effective 1 January 2026. The move signals the consumer brand’s intent to simplify and align its media operations across regions, while testing whether integrated, network-led models can deliver sharper accountability in both mature and emerging markets.

In India, the additional e-commerce mandate places WPP Media closer to the point of sale. As part of the engagement, the network will deploy a dedicated team of commerce specialists embedded within Reckitt’s e-commerce operations. The team will work across commerce media strategy, execution, analytics and performance optimisation, with the objective of improving discoverability, consideration and conversion across India’s rapidly evolving digital retail ecosystem.

“As a business, our expectation from our media partner goes beyond efficiency, it is about accountability for growth. WPP Media has demonstrated the ability to deliver consistency on core media while bringing sharper execution and rigour into e-commerce, a channel that is increasingly material to our topline. This expanded partnership gives us confidence that our brands are being built for the long term, while also winning at the digital shelf every day,” said Gaurav Jain, executive vice president, South Asia, Reckitt.

The mandate now spans e-commerce and quick commerce platforms, extending across Reckitt’s full Indian portfolio, including Dettol, Harpic, Durex, Finish, Lysol and Veet. For media agencies, this reflects a broader shift in client expectations: media partners are no longer evaluated solely on rates and reach, but on their ability to connect brand investments with performance outcomes in environments increasingly controlled by platforms and algorithms.

Ajay Gupte, president, client solutions at WPP Media South Asia, positioned the renewal as a continuation of that integrated approach. “The renewal and expansion of our partnership with Reckitt is a strong reflection of the trust we’ve built through consistent delivery and shared ambition. As media and commerce continue to converge, our focus is on creating integrated strategies that balance brand-building with performance, scale with precision, and creativity with data. This expanded mandate enables us to deliver more connected, impactful consumer experiences and drive sustainable business growth for Reckitt in India and beyond,” he said.

The timing of the expanded partnership coincides with steady, though uneven, business performance for Reckitt in India. The company reported a 7% like-for-like increase in net revenue for the third quarter of 2025 (July–September). In India, sell-out momentum remained encouraging, although LFL revenue growth stayed in the low single digits, partly due to GST-related changes introduced in September. During the quarter, Durex recorded market share gains in the country.

More broadly, emerging markets, including India, China and Latin America, were the primary contributors to Reckitt’s growth. Intimate wellness and self-care delivered double-digit growth, while emerging market net revenue rose 15.5% LFL, supported by 7.4% volume growth, to £1,080 million. At a group level, the core Reckitt business grew 6.7% LFL.

For WPP Media, the Reckitt mandate offers a counterpoint to a mixed regional performance picture. India was the only market among WPP’s top five to post growth in the first half of the year, with overall revenue of $6,663 million. While WPP’s global revenue declined 7.8%, India grew 0.1%. This followed stronger growth of 8.1% in the first quarter of 2024, before revenue dipped 3.9% in the second quarter.

Other regions fared worse: China declined 16.6%, Latin America fell 2.7%, the Middle East and Africa slipped 2.6%, and the US declined 2.3%. Central and Eastern Europe was the exception, growing 2.2%, while the UK saw revenue fall 6%.

Against this backdrop, retaining and expanding a large, complex mandate such as Reckitt’s in India underscores the strategic importance of integrated media and commerce capabilities. As marketers place greater emphasis on measurable growth and accountability at the digital shelf, the ability of media agencies to operate seamlessly across brand and performance will increasingly determine whether such mandates remain stable—or come up for review again.