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WPP chiude il 2017 con ricavi netti su base omogenea in calo dello 0,9%. Per il 2018 previsti ricavi sostanzialmente in linea con quelli dell’anno scorso. Sorrell: “Per noi il 2017 non è stato un bell’anno”

Così Sir Martin Sorrell (nella foto), Ceo WPP, commenta i risultati in una nota emessa dal Gruppo e anticipa le prossime strategie: “2017 for us was not a pretty year, with flat like-for-like, top-line growth, and operating margins and operating profits also flat, or up marginally.

The major factors influencing this performance were probably the long-term impact of technological disruption and more the short-term focus of zero-based budgeters, activist investors and private equity than, we believe, the suggested disintermediation of agencies by Google and Facebook or digital competition from consultants.

In this environment, the most successful agency groups will be those who offer simplicity and flexibility of structure to deliver efficient, effective solutions – and therefore growth – for their clients. With this in mind, we are now accelerating the implementation of our strategy for the Group.

No company in the world of marketing or business transformation has a greater or more varied repertory of talent and capabilities than WPP. Our strength, however, resides not only in the scale and variety of those skills, but in our unique ability to combine them in service of our clients’ growth – which is why most of the world’s leading companies choose WPP to provide them with communications services.

For many years we have placed ‘horizontality’ at the heart of our strategy by presenting clients with tailor-made and seamlessly integrated offers to meet their specific requirements. Over the last year, we have begun to apply that philosophy to the structure of the Group itself by simplifying a number of our operations.

As our industry continues to undergo fundamental change, we are upping the pace of WPP’s development from a group of individual companies to a cohesive global team dedicated to the core purpose of driving growth for clients.

As we build an increasingly unified WPP, we are focusing on a number of areas that will allow us to deploy our deep expertise with greater flexibility, efficiency and speed. These include: further simplification of our structure; stronger client co-ordination across the whole of WPP, including greater responsibility and authority for global client teams and country managers; the development of key cross-Group capabilities in digital marketing, digital production, eCommerce and shopper marketing; further sharing of functions, systems and platforms across the Group; and the development and implementation of senior executive incentives to align them even more closely to Group performance.

We start this new phase of our journey from a position of market leadership, and with total confidence in the enduring value of what we offer our clients. We will report at every opportunity on our progress”.

WPP 2017 Preliminary Results