Inside WPP Media's Bold Rebrand: A Year of Transformation and Triumph

Last year, WPP’s media agency collective, then known as GroupM, became WPP Media. The world’s trade press was awash with stories of redundancies, potential client conflicts, and hand-wringing over reduced agency brand value. But in Australia, the story was different.

Two Days on the Gold Coast

“We started the journey probably 18 months before when we joined,” said Aimee Buchanan, head of WPP Media Australia. The entire 1,000-strong Australian business descended on the Gold Coast for a two-day off-site experience. There, they set out the vision: make the Australian WPP Media business truly world-class through centralising knowledge and expertise while ensuring staff have access to the best training.

“We were able to get in front of all our people and say ‘Here’s the vision moving forward for WPP Media. This is where we’re going to go.’ That really energised and excited people,” said EssenceMediacom CEO Pippa Berlocher.

“There are moments in time that just signal change and the GroupM to WPP Media was one,” said Wavemaker CEO Peter Vogel.

Clients, Capabilities & Centralisation

Clients experienced no immediate changes, but they began seeing the industrialisation of thought leadership, future of media work, and access to broader capabilities. WPP Media didn’t invent new capabilities; instead, its new structure allowed greater investment in and scaling of existing ones. Specialised functions became centres of excellence.

• Wavemaker’s strong influencer and social practice, led by Shivani Maharaj, expanded across the group.
• Marc Lomas, head of commerce, found a wider remit.
• Tom Braybrook, MD of Choreograph, now leads WPP Media’s analytics centre of excellence.
• Chris Hitchcock’s sport partnerships work expanded group-wide.
• Mindshare’s Dan Benton now leads WPP Media’s experience work, including SEO and affiliate marketing.

“What we’ve done extremely well is put the data, the measurability and the technology behind all of those services,” said Vogel.

WPP Media’s specialised staff are now embedded into clients or sit within their traditional agencies but report up into the central function. This avoids conflicts and sharing of confidential client information.

The change is proving popular with clients. Mindshare and EssenceMediacom placed first and second on B&T’s final 2025 New Business Winner round-up. Wavemaker is B&T’s reigning Media Agency of the Year.

Talent

All four CEOs continually return to WPP Media’s staff proposition, often through an AI lens.

“The evolution of our talent through the year has been personally exciting to witness,” said Mindshare CEO Maria Grivas. “All our staff became so proficient, not just in understanding how they can personally use the LLMs that WPP Open gives them access to but equally proficient in understanding how the media landscape is evolving.”

Buchanan said WPP Media has been clear in positioning AI to staff: “We haven’t told anyone they must use it. We’ve just opened the toolkit up. It’s the human ingenuity of our people that will set us apart.”

The company expanded development and training for all staff, with a new learning syllabus for MDs centred on leading through change and applying technology to human skills.

While clients might not have noticed much change immediately, the shift from GroupM to WPP Media was far more than a simple rebrand.