WPP plc (WPP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining this webinar. Based on your feedback today, you tell us you find these sessions really useful, so we're going to intend continuing to run roughly about one every quarter. Today's focus is on the role of our global client leaders. Obviously, new business captures all the headlines, Coke, Unilever, for example, and is actually the ongoing management of our key biggest client relationships which is a huge value driver for our business. And we've channeled a lot of investment in this area over the last 4 years, and it's here, actually, that we're best placed, of course, to expand into our high-growth areas of commerce, experience and technology. Lindsay Pattison, who joins us on the call, is our Chief Client Officer, and she's going to kick off the presentation. And then we're going to hear 2 client case studies from Carl Hartman and Amy Winger. So happy to take any questions, of course, as we go through, and please submit those through the usual means throughout the presentation. And with that, I'm going to hand over to Lindsay. Thank you.

Thanks very much, John. Nice to see some of you again. I've done a couple of these before, so good to have the time with you. If we just move on. So as John said, I'm going to talk just broadly and give you a snapshot of our largest clients, remind you of our ambition for those clients. I'm going to share with you who the top 20 is and some figures around the concentration of our spend with those top clients. And then I'm going to talk about the performance over actually the last 2 years and how we're feeling about going into -- well, I guess we're 3/4 of the way through 2022. We'll look at our client satisfaction study which we've invested a lot of time and effort into really listening to our clients and understanding why or how they're valuing us. I'll briefly then talk about the broader parts of my role beyond the global client needs, but the global client leaders are the best example of how we try and offer our clients really the best of WPP, so a single point of access into everything that they might possibly need in order to solve their business problem. So I'm delighted we've got Carl, who've got the magic formula for growth for Colgate-Palmolive. And Amy, who has -- she has the best team name. I should be wearing my Team Wonderful sweater, but she'll talk about the brilliant growth we've had year-on-year-on-year with Intel. So if we just move forward, I'll just give you a snapshot -- sorry, reminder first of our -- the mission, the mission that I have, the mission that our global client leaders and anyone at work essentially has, which I truly believe that we can create a competitive advantage for WPP. And when clients choose us and when they choose to spend more money with us and increase their tenure with us, it's because we are super focused on delivering client satisfaction and delivering excellent client satisfaction. And we help our largest clients transform by unleashing the power of creativity, and we really believe in the power of creativity and brilliance in communication. But as John said, we focus very much with those larger clients on driving organic growth by expanding into experience, commerce and technology. And we believe that by growing our clients' business, we will, in turn, drive organic growth for WPP. And I think that emphasis, and flips over, focus on our clients' business. And you'll see Carl and Amy know more about Colgate-Palmolive. And in Southern, many people that work there, the real focus on the clients' business, and in turn, by doing the right thing by understanding and listening hard to their needs, we will grow our own revenues. So if you just flip on, I'll show you briefly this is a reminder of our top 20 clients. They do change around between sort of 17 to 23, but our top 10 remains fairly stable. You'll see we've got 7 here in CPG. We count BAT as CPG. We have 5 in technology, which is always a story we feel we probably should talk more about. And so today, we've deliberately chosen CPG and a tech example with Carl and Amy; 3 in pharma and health care, which has been one of the highest growth areas for obvious reasons in the last 2 years and continues to grow; 2 in auto, Ford remaining our largest client; 2 in retail; and 1 in telecoms. And in terms of that concentration, our top 10 account for about 19% of our net sales, and the figure we show here is our top 30, equal about 30% of our net sales. 18 of our top 20 clients, so the ones you'll see here, have over GBP 100 million of net sales. And increasingly, what's important and the reason we talk about collaboration at WPP and the reason we have global client leaders is actually the amount of different agencies and capabilities that any client needs today. So 85% of our top 100 work with 5 or more of our agencies. And we just started to pull more of this data to try and explain or show how the growth works across the total business. And we've got our highest-ever client satisfaction at 8.1. If Caitlin, you flip over. We've talked about this over the last 3 years that our clients are doing well. And actually, our CSAT scores really began to move up in 2019 and then shot up actually to the highest-ever levels during COVID. And if you look at these -- the figures here, and anyone that's on the call, last year, they're focused on clients. You'll see that whilst all WPP declined by minus 8.2% in 2020, the first year of COVID, all GCR-led accounts declined by just under 4% and our top 20 clients only by -- I've cheekily put it in green. It's not green, but it's almost green, only declined by 0.5%. And we really felt that our clients lend on WPP in a really trusted way. We acted really quickly. We shifted lots of their media money, which is obviously very important. We changed their communication. We helped with their corporate communications and crisis management. And we actually did a lot for -- with colleagues and employee-led engagement as well as a high-growth area. We then help them recover and think about how the businesses were coming back and then really help them renew -- reset or renew for a post-COVID world, so really positive performance for our largest clients in 2020. And then in 2021, 17 of those top 30 clients grew more than 10% on a 2-year basis. And 8 out of the top 10 clients grew more than 20% on a 2-year basis. So we are seeing those trends continue. And the 2 clients we've chosen to show you today are definitely growth clients year-on-year-on-year. So we just move forward. This is the likelihood to recommend, so our client satisfaction study. We interview about -- I think it's 47,000 clients around the world each year. And the core question we ask them is on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend, sometimes it's WPP, but often it will be VMLY&R or MediaCom, whichever agency they're working with. And you'll see, as I said, we've had an upward trend in the overall scores but fantastic scores during COVID, and we've maintained those in 2021. And some work that I'll come back to at the end that we're doing with the finance team, so working with some of John's colleagues, is really now looking to try and link into our financial system. And we have a statistically robust model, which shows the LTRs, the likelihood to recommend, or advocacy is now proven to predict revenue growth. And if we just dive on -- move on one side and dive in a bit deeper, we also picked the different drivers of client satisfaction. So what you're seeing here is the scores from 2017 through to 2021. And very broadly, you'll see not great scores, to be honest with you. Scores, some in the 6s and the highest just 7.7. And over time, you'll see these steadily improving to some fantastic scores in 2021. And what we've pulled out in green in the 2021 column are the 3 core drivers that are driving the likelihood to recommend scores. And the highest for that is quality of staff, which is why we talk so much about tenant retention and employee satisfaction and what we are doing to encourage people to work across WPP in many different agencies that we have. So 8.39 for quality of staff. The second -- almost the second highest is diversity, equity and inclusion, which is a new measure we added in for the first time last year. So we asked clients how well is WPP helping you achieve your DE and I goals. So that's a good score. We're very heartened by that. Loads more work to do, but 8.23 is a fantastic score. And then client service. So again, back to why our talent is so important in the marketplace. And if we just move through, Catlin. And just wanted to pull out a tiny bit more of that DE and I data. So as I said, there's the question how well do we support our clients in their DE&I goals. And you'll see here just we split this out by market. We can split it out by client. We can split it out by agency, and we can do the same for any of those drivers. So we have a team of around 8 entirely focused on client satisfaction and working with each of the agencies to pull that forward. And here's just a couple of examples of work we've done. I sit on the inclusion council for WPP, and one of the tasks we set ourselves in terms of understanding our role and our impact for clients last year was to ask our top 10 agencies to give us just one -- I mean, people have many, but one example from each of their top 10 clients. So we now have 100 immediate case studies that have shown different types of work we do. And here's a great example. For Google, AKQA developed a product inclusion tool which allows Googlers to measure how inclusive their product is. And if any American friends are on the line, you may have seen that the Google ads, featuring Lizzo in this year's Super Bowl was about the hashtags seen on Pixel, which is about the fact that the Pixel phone now captures Black faces in the depth and the kind of beauty -- really, the depth and beauty, but the pixelation that really a Black skin should enjoy, whereas actually most phones have been designed to pixelate and to create better pictures of White people. So that's an example of that product in access. But the breadth of what we do in terms of offering our clients help on DEI is incredibly wide-ranging. So the example for WBA is creating a partnership with Uber to provide safe transportation to vaccine centers. We also had a technology solution that helped to identify COVID-hesitant people in areas where there were vaccines and use technology to create digital communications to those who most needed the COVID vaccinations to try and push them over the line to go and get their jabs. And then for many of our clients in the U.S., we have some really strong leadership by GroupM in the diversity space. And we've encouraged most of our clients to sign up to a pledge, which is about spending money with diverse media owners, which is the example shown there for L'Oreal. And if we just move on. So as I said, my role broadly has 4 parts. The first is looking after and working with and supporting from below our global client leaders, who, which you will see in a moment, are some of our most experienced business leaders who build incredibly high stakeholder relationships. They are relentlessly innovative. They put collaboration at the heart of what we do, and they're really trying to ensure that the client gets the best of WPP every single time. For the first time this year -- so we have 44 global client leaders. For the first time this year, we're really also trying to support -- we've identified and are now supporting 56 key client leaders. So these -- this means that across our top 100, we've now got someone, senior point of contact that's responsible for always thinking, "Well, I wonder who else can help me solve my problems?" And it's a means of us being able to get in touch and build a relationship across our top 100. As you will have seen in those numbers, the concentration is there at the top 13 and up to the top 50, but actually our top 100 represent 53% of our revenue. So it's important that we look across all 100, if possible. The other end of my role that we developed in the last 1.5 years is really developing communities where experts in either a discipline or a capability come together, compare best practice, develop IP often at times to ensure that across all our different agencies, we're connecting people to have high-level conversations and understanding how they might better serve those clients. So we have a very robust help community, which actually has its own Chief Technology Officer, has a Head of Talent, specifically looking at how we bring talent into that area, and has a Head of Growth, a dedicated growth new business person. We have a business transformation community, which is driving a B2B community. And then most of the agencies have Chief Client Officers, so they also come together and understand what they can use in the central program and share best practice. And last but not least, we have Chief Strategy Officers, helping us think about how we instill and upgrade that discipline across all of our agencies. And then last but not least, we create centrally playbooks on how to or the best of, so how to do connected commerce in the world of auto or the best of WPP in terms of sustainability. We have events, connections. We create experiences. We're now increasingly thinking about leadership in development. So we have a term, and Carl and Amy, you can speak to this, of L&D that we focus on our GCLs and our most senior people at WPP. But increasingly, we're finding that our clients would also like to have this learning experience as well, so a multi-academy -- commerce academy, and we're just building up an experienced academy. If we just look on just super briefly, there's a team -- small team around me, who normally gets through me or me and Laurent, but I have a Head of Business Transformation Strategy and Innovation. Ben heads up our planning; [ Sarah ], L&D; Nina, client experience; and Peter, commercial, supported by a small team. So there's not just me. There's a beautiful team supporting me. And if we just move on. Last but not least, and I think this will be interesting to you because I know you often ask Peregrine and John how we try and predict growth. So the first thing we do and we've done for 3, 3.5, 4 years is we always have very rigorous growth planning across our top 50 clients. So as a set template, we investigate and interrogate all the different opportunities for growth, what resources that global client leader needs to do that and that global client leader does that in conjunction with all of the stakeholder agencies. And I feel that that's a very, very robust planning process now. And in terms of them predicting -- and within that, obviously, we have a budget, and then we push them to a stretch, and then we think about transformational ideas. So we never just accept the budget. We're always looking for where they're going to find growth. But what we're trying to do with our Vantage data, so I see a client satisfaction data, is marry that in with our Cartesis, so our financial system, and see what the correlation has been. And you've got a screen grab of it, which you probably can't see that much of now, but we're trying to match the client satisfaction and our revenue growth. And by matching those databases, we've got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of records. And we can go back for 5 years. We've been able to confirm actually a correlation between client satisfaction and revenue, especially amongst decision-makers and organizations, because we can split our CSAT data. So we're piloting a predictive model over the next 6 to 12 months. So we can't hand you the model now. But based on that historical revenue and client satisfaction data, it won't provide absolute percentages or value, but so far -- and we've got -- looking at my notes because we've got correlation analysis, regression analysis and random Forrester analysis. And at the moment, it's 86% accurate in terms of looking at revenue decline or growth across our top 200 clients. So just trying to show you that we're continually thinking about the future as how we may drive that forward and help you as you try and evaluate our business and our business growth. So with that, I'm going to hand over to Carl. Thanks, Carl.

Thank you, Lindsay. I'm Carl Hartman. I'm the global client leader on the Colgate-Palmolive business. I've been in this role for almost 4 years. They've gone by remarkably fast. Lindsay and John asked me to share a little bit of my background. I grew up in the advertising business at Young & Rubicam, running integrated accounts; moved into media, working with what is now called Wavemaker. I also ran as CEO for North America Geometry and learned sort of the shopper e-commerce business. Previously, I was a global client leader in Kimberly-Clark. And now I'm working on Colgate. And on behalf of Amy and the rest of the GCLs, I'll say, in some ways, this is the best role within WPP because you get to see across the clients business, you get to see across WPP. In the same breath, I'll say they are also the more challenging roles within WPP because of those 2 things. It's very complicated. WPP is changing every minute. Clients are changing. So anyway, it's sort of the yin and the yang of that. So just on the next chart, just a little bit of an introduction on Colgate-Palmolive. It really is an extraordinary company. They are the #1 global brand in terms of worldwide household penetration. Almost 60% of households worldwide have a Colgate-branded product in them. That's a lot of households. And they sell in 200 markets. They're #1 market share in toothpaste globally, and they're also the #1 company in household products industry by the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. So they are a -- everybody else thinks a lot of their competitors as being the most global. I would argue that Colgate is the most global company in the world. We've been the agency of record for Colgate in different manifestations for 26 years, which is a long time. But I think what that has done is really built up a trust between ourselves and Colgate that I think is sort of the bedrock of the relationship. So if we go to the next slide, the role of the GCL, I hinted at this, the complexity, just a window into my world. I'd say part of it's vision. We need to have a vision for what the client needs to do and helping them. We also need to have a vision for what WPP can do for the client. There's a lot of integration, which sounds easier than it is. And even within Colgate, I've got Colgate-Palmolive leadership. We've got divisions that we deal with. There's the Hill's Pet Food business, the skin health business. There's global IT. There's innovation and R&D. There are analytics and insights, packaging and design. So there's a lot of the client that we're trying to weave together, and then we're also trying to weave together all of WPP. There's a lot of coaching that goes on. A lot of firefighting, they are what I call high-octane issues. If I get a call, it usually means something is pretty serious. There's also creative transformation, which is a huge initiative; digital transformation, which all of our clients are going through; and then leadership; talent; and rotation. So there aren't many weeks where I think I'm bored. Let me just put it that way. So what -- at the beginning, I talked about what is the recipe for growth. So if you go to the next slide, I'll take you through 5 things. I think the first is intimacy. We really do know the clients. And when I say the clients, I'm not saying that in a generic way, I'm saying we know the clients. Like I know the person who's in charge of sustainability. I know the person who's in charge of legal. I know the person who's in charge of procurement, and we know that at every level within the Colgate organization. So I think knowing people on a very human level and knowing what their ambitions are and what their challenges are is critical. Of course, the dogs are barking. I apologize. Knowing how decisions get made. Every client works in a different way. You sort of have to follow the money within the client. And knowing at Colgate, the divisions make a lot of decisions is important. And then knowing what Colgate's business priorities are, and that's sort of my touchstone. What Lindsay said before is we need to grow our clients' business first. And I always think, look, if I do that, then everything else will follow in terms of WPP growth. So the touchstone, I know at the end of the day, if I'm working on Colgate business priorities, I'm working on the right things. The second on the next slide is really agility. I think we reached a point in this industry where the pace of change is constant, and so we need to constantly adapt and evolve. And so we need to move toward the areas of change that we see, programmatic and e-commerce and digital transformation. We need to be comfortable with blowing up the past. I would say the vast majority of people who worked on the Colgate business when I came onboard aren't working on the Colgate business today, and that isn't because they were bad. It's just because we need to refresh talent. We need to get new thinking. We need to get people who are on the cutting edge. We have to tap into the best of WPP at every stage, and WPP changes every day. We're making different acquisitions. Agencies hire different talent. And then one thing that Colgate has really impressed upon me is they want us to provide confidence in future-proofing. Today, it's the cookieless world. What is it tomorrow? What should we be doing about the metaverse? What should we be doing about AI and machine learning? So agility, it really is a job where, if I look at my to-do list today, it doesn't look much like my to-do list of last year. Okay. The third thing is creativity. And I'm glad you see it on advantage scores now because it is critical. And I'd say the consultants out there in the world can do a lot of things. They can't do creativity. Big ideas are really at the heart of the WPP offering. Colgate knows that creativity will lead to business growth, right? That's a proven construct. That's not a leap of faith. And I think because we have proximity to culture, we have some of the best creative talent in the world, we're able to provide creative that really performs from them. And in some ways, creative is really the only differentiator. Ben Kay talks about creativity being the last big, competitive advantage. And I really do believe that. Everybody is doing digital transformation, and there will be marginal differences in how people do that, but creativity is the X factor. I will say our equity work for Colgate is a great example of that. It really does 3 things. One is it builds brand strength, as measured by Kantar North Star measures. It has a halo effect across all their products, so it's a very efficient and effective means of communication. And it has the highest ratings in terms of marketing mix modeling. So that's a great example of great work. It also won -- it can. So it's performing for their business, and it's recognized by our peers. But I think this is really something that all the GCLs have to deliver. And if we don't, the relationship won't be that long. Okay. The fourth thing is the right model. And I'll predicate this by saying there is no one right model. There's only one right model for today, and there probably won't be the right model for tomorrow. So a lot of what I'm doing, what Amy does is we're trying to figure out what the client needs of tomorrow are and trying to rejigger. But in general, Red Fuse went from an integrated insular agency of the future to now being -- you see this idea of corn more. We've got core agencies that we do work with on a very consistent way. And you want people to understand the Colgate business. You want them to understand the brands and things of that nature, and we have more. So we have access to the best of WPP, and we're choiceful about when and where to bring those resources and assets in. Okay. And then the fifth is alignment. And alignment is -- maybe I'm cheating and talking about integration again. But if you think about digital transformation, that's alignment. That's a system. So search and e-commerce and social and programmatic, these things are all related. We tend to think of them in a disciplined way. A lot of what a global client leader does is we try to get them to work in a more systematic way and to get all parts of the organization talking to each other on the Colgate side and the WPP side. It also helps when the client's strategic priorities are WPP's strategic priorities. So if you look at what Colgate talks about in terms of what they want do in terms of their transformation, it's completely aligned up to WPP. So thank you, John and Lindsay, for making that happen. The last one is really potentially the hardest to do, but I would say global, regional and local alignment is easier said than done, but that's something that's critical within the Colgate organization. Okay. And I will -- I think this is my last one. I would say human skills, and this really is a human job in a technologically driven business. First is we have to be good listeners. This can't be just about what WPP wants. We have to listen to what the client wants. My wife is a therapist, and she talks about meeting clients where they are. And I think we need to meet our clients where they are, too. We play well with others. Our consultants talking to our clients. Bain is talking to them. BCG is talking to them. That isn't a threat. We're working with them, and I look at it as we want to make them win for Colgate, too. So -- and then the last is it really is a true partnership. And I talked about trust in the beginning, but we know -- they know that we're trying to do the best thing for them and vice versa. So it really is a partnership. So I'll end with -- on the next slide, just an example. So Brigitte King, fairly new to Colgate. I think she's been there for 2 years, Global Chief Digital Officer. She came from L'Oreal and some other client engagements. She spoke at CAGNY, the consumer good forum for analysts in New York. And so she's talking about some pretty ambitious goals: 27% digital net sales growth, 5-year CAGR digital sales growth of 42%, 230 basis point improvement in 2021 e-commerce, 80 markets with programmatic. So when she's saying that, know that we're behind that. We're helping and we're partners in what she's saying to The Street. And she knows that, and we know that. So that is Colgate. I will now turn it over to the wonderful Amy Winger to talk about Intel.

Thanks, Carl. Hi, everyone. I'm Amy Winger. I'm the GCL for our new Intel relationship, just 2 years old. We've got a ways to go to get to 20-plus years that Carl's team represents. I'll just start by telling you a little bit about my background and how I come to the GCL role. I've been with VML, now VMLY&R WPP, since 1999. I spent the first half of my career in client engagement, business management and the second half in strategy, most recently, our Global Chief Strategy Officer for VML. I have worked across many industries, cereal, egg and box cereal, to enterprise software, now to hardware. The experience ranges also from the early transition from direct to mail to e-mail marketing, which maybe dates me a little bit more to full tech stack implementations to global marketing. So all of that, I bring that to this engagement with Intel, which is indeed wonderful. I also have a special love. Sort of my side hustle in advertising is creative effectiveness. And so that's a real passion point. For me, proving the value of creativity, the business value, the economic value of creativity to brands, to clients is super important. So today, I will share a couple of slides on how we started and how it's going and then a few key priorities for us here on Team Wonderful. There are a couple of interesting things about us, and you'll pick those up, then I'll call them out as we go. So this was a pitch, as some of you might remember, that lasted several months during 2019 and was closed in just the first couple of months of 2020, and that's when the award was. And really, there are 3 key focus areas for us. A lot behind this. But if I were to boil it down, I'd say, we're here to be a global creative agency of record, also to create integrated product marketing, campaigns and programs and experiences across business and consumer and then also to create, launch and steward a new brand identity system. And so this was won by VMLY&R. And it would be a fantastic win, a fantastic story, even if it stopped there, especially because VML, Y&R, VMLY&R coming together, it's this global powerhouse was an early -- a very successful example of WPP's simplification strategy. So VMLY&R lands this work. And I thought that the subhead, if you go to the next slide, the subhead, as I was putting this presentation together, was an interesting jumping-off point because the press that an integrated WPP team, consisting of various shops assisting on the account. And so that's -- it kind of makes the rest of us sound like condiments or sort of side dishes. And so really, what the GCL role, what my mission is, is to create a best -- I would love for this subhead to say WPP brings best of WPP team to tech giants. And so that's the mission that I'm on is to make sure that this subhead is an ever true in actual fact. But it's a good jumping-off point, looking back in time. A little context for where we were just 2 years ago, not down to the day, but pretty close. It's almost hard to remember the incredible uncertainty that existed when the world went into lockdown, and it was at that very moment that our clients were set to fly from the Bay Area to Kansas City. And we have all the window clings still up. They've been here since, fortunately. But it's difficult to -- difficult almost to imagine. One, there was a time when we didn't talk about chips all the time. We certainly didn't know there is going to be a chip shortage. And we didn't know that this fantastic, much-celebrated, much-anticipated win would need to start completely virtual. So one note about our team, we were kind of born and formed and chartered completely virtually and have been virtual this entire time, save a few recent trips, both on production and also to our WPP campus in San Francisco, which is an awesome landing spot for our team. At the same time then, Intel is transforming. And I hope many of you saw the State of the Union Address with Pat Gelsinger and of course billions of dollars being invested in chip factories in the United States and in Western Europe. So I'll just say take -- just look at that Core i9 chip in the middle and then that little, tiny Intel down in the lower right because I'll come back to those in a couple of minutes. Next slide. So really, I'm going to talk about 3 things that are key to our approach, being a new account -- an account that was the result sort of the win here for VMLY&R was the consolidation from 5 or 6 separate entities, and this was post-Intel's Agency Inside period. So it's Agency Inside to 5 or 6 agencies then a consolidation here for global creative agency of record. And so first strategic pillar for us, we are purpose-built. And what does that mean to us? If you look back to pre-2020, who we were as WPP, a collection of great agencies working around the world, doing great work for their clients, not necessarily connected, though, and delivering that like classic 1 plus 1 equals 3 or just a classic multiplier effect. So post the award to VMLY&R then, VMLY&R, from a model perspective, access center of gravity, key context creation. Context is incredibly important when it comes to working with any client because as much as we can do sort of the same thing from client to client, every brand, every corporation has its own context and ways of being a slight -- is on the goal of growth or what have you. And so now is Team Wonderful, which is a riff on a famous founder "do something wonderful." On Team Wonderful, we've got VMLY&R as the hub, creating that gravity, creating that context as global strategic and creative agency of record. And then we are able to pull in, not just the legacy agencies who are already working with Intel, but also new capabilities in commerce and in data and in content and MarTech. And when we are able now to work in -- if this -- I almost wish this was animating because it's very much a living sort of model. When we are able to come together, and that's -- again, that's my role, to pull us all together, as needed, when needed for the greater good of Intel, we're able to do things like the couple of examples I'll share on the next couple of slides. I just thought it would be helpful to see a little bit in action. So if number one is we are purpose-built, number 2 is flexible, not fixed. And Carl talked about flexibility. Flexibility, agility, of course, is an absolute mandatory in modern marketing. And it's incredibly important to match flexibility and flexibility when you've got a client in transition. We also need to be permanently, if you're sports fans, always in ready position, and that's where we are on this business. So flexible, not fixed, means -- and here's a relatively low lift example. But as an example, GSI, a terrific search -- kind of search insights boutique, already resident at Intel, tremendous amount of knowledge. If we're able to connect their insights and data with Landor & Fitch and the brand strategy work that they're doing on the product strategy and then also connect what GSI is doing over to the VMLY&R creative and strategy team, we're able to maximize our absolute benefit to our value to Intel without our Intel clients having to sort of force connections together. Because anymore -- in any organization, our clients need us as mature marketers to create connections, to create value, to create our own momentum and direction alongside of them. So that's a relatively low lift example. I have one more here, and then you'll clearly get the picture of what we're talking about, from popping up teams and joining capabilities together to get to this best of approach and mission that we're on. So if we are to stand up a, we'll say, demand generation nurture program, what if we already have the agencies working in related -- kind of related spaces with our client, what if we connect the MarTech power of Verticurl, the data and insights power of Wunderman Thompson, the content expertise of SJR and then the campaign and experience know-how of VMLY&R? Because if we just do that, do that very elegantly, very smartly in a very flexible way, we get a nurture offering. And so then, in that way, then we can build a team on the fly. Everyone knows what their mission is and how we work together, and then we celebrate the success together. So that is number two. And the third one is -- I would almost say, full stop, we are on a creative mission, but there's more to do. But we were hired for creative transformation. And what that means, if you remember back to that montage I had of some Intel headlines, we created only the third-ever visual identity in Intel's history, which is phenomenal. I am so proud of this team and of this beautiful wordmark and all that there is. And to think all of there is now 2 years, hence, we're starting our third year right now. And to think that this work and work. I will show you in just a bit all happened while people were at home, learning how to use Webex, or Teams or whatever it was is really a testament to the talent and to the commitment, both of the WPP team and the Intel team as well. And so -- and I will say, I told Lindsay and team that I did bring this award. We got it coveted, procurement award from Intel for this work during COVID for -- in recognition, not only of the great work that we reinvented how we work. And so this means a lot to us. Intel procurement told me that agencies don't usually win this award. It might be a first and also that they're super proud of the work. So they also said it was like the Cannes Lion of procurement awards, which I believe it is. I've never gotten an award from procurement. So I think that speaks a lot to the relationship. We also made this work and much more. If you go to the next slide, so not just the wordmark, but even more work. All the visual identity you see comes out of our team, and it's tremendous work that is driving Intel's brands forward, and we're carrying it through into the campaign work. And so if you go to just one more slide, this is just a sampling of the campaign work that we have been doing. And in our very first year together, again, that like a long ago feeling -- period of time where we were just starting work and figuring out how to be a team. We were shortlisted at Cannes and also recognized at Effies. And so our aim here is creative transformation in all forms that we can do that. These are just a few of the programs that have already launched. Of course, there's more to come, but we are very proud of this work. We -- well, Intel doesn't use Vantage as a measurement tool. We have a custom -- sort of custom-blend scorecard. Our scores are also very good and getting better as well, so a lot of pride in this work. And like I said, more to come. So with that, in summary, 3 keys of success here as we embark on year 3. And if you go to the last -- the next slide here, they are we're purpose-built; we're super flexible, not fixed. There's a lot of opportunity that pops up and a lot of critical businesses that pop up, and we need to be ready. And it's my role to pull everyone together to create the context and the goals, and then we roll. And then lastly, creativity, creativity, creativity. And I'll also say creative effectiveness as part of that, very important to develop that muscle memory for everybody in an organization. That creativity isn't just from the arts and crafts department. Creativity drives business, and that's what we're here to do. So I will just leave you by saying go do something wonderful. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Amy and Carl. Amazing. So I will kick off with some -- I'll dive through the questions. So get ready to come off mute, you guys. I'll take one very briefly myself. There's a question about how are GCRs incented before and now. I don't know what it was before. It was slightly random before. I think it was always a mystery as to how anyone got incented, to be completely honest, in our former ownership. But now, GCLs are very clearly incentivized, 100% on pan-WPP success. 70% of that is on net sales growth, and we have 3 points. We have a trigger point, a midpoint and a target point. And then 3 qualitative scores. The first is collaboration. The second is creativity, and the third is client satisfaction. So we use obviously the Vantage score, so very clearly defined ways for them to achieve that bonus potential. The second, I'm going to direct to Carl. And I'm going to give the third, if you then flip on, to Amy because I think they're kind of related. So Carl, I wanted to answer this, but I'll let you answer it, because I know what my answer would be. The question was around, is there easy navigation now versus before? Because you mentioned the word complexity and obviously much on the non-simplification drive. But is it better? If so, why? And what else might we do? And I think you talked a bit about that with core more. And you might want to talk about -- your version of Navigator, to put words in your mouth. And then if you pass to Amy, there was a specific question for you, which is similar, I think, which is about talking about how was the merger of VMLY&R. So I'll hand to you, Carl.

All right. Thank you, Lindsay. First, I wouldn't be afraid of the word complexity because I think it's just -- you might as well replace that with reality, and I just think that's how the world is right now. But I think WPP is so much easier to navigate than it used to be because there are fewer agencies because there have been a lot of mergers, that's made it simpler. Lindsay's created a great global client leader community. I don't know if I'm willing to admit that our -- part of our secret sauce is the WhatsApp chat group. But just by thinking of ourselves as a community that anybody can answer questions and you're not alone in this business makes a huge difference. There's a lot more of an effort to get to know the newest members of the WPP family. We're getting to know Satalia and what they can do in AI. That's a lot more formal. And then the last is there's just a lot more training than there ever was. We used to have no training. Now, Lindsay, potentially, we have too much. But I guess that's another issue. But I would say it is easier now than it has been, but it's always not easy. And, Amy, I'll turn it over to you.

I agree. The structure is simpler, and I don't -- you used the word I was going to try to remember, Carl. But it's not just structural, it's cultural. And that is important that we're all -- we all know to lean into each other and reach out. And so if on Intel, I am -- the super interesting brand challenge similarities between Colgate and Intel, if the Colgate strategy and creative leads can come and talk with my clients and vice versa, and we can call it, share, not sell, we can share super interesting, and it's in its way, it's a form of enrichment and training. Down to the VMLY&R merger, yes. So I was at VML for -- pre-WPP when we were just a little private shop. And so it's been great. And how has it been for the organization for clients generally? I think it has given -- it has been a nice puzzle connection of 2 pieces together, where VML is exceptionally strong as a legacy agency in the United States; Y&R, having an amazing footprint, not just in the United States, but globally, bringing that together. And then also helpful, and I'm sure you've heard this before, that VML and Y&R had some sort of organizational relationship for that official merger. But the geographical merging and then also the merging of some pieces of culture have also been really useful. So I can see the value delivery from my role as GCL differently and more clearly because we do need depth in all the ways that we have now.

Sorry, it does come off-mic. There was another question which I will take, which was a question saying, "Do we plan to go deeper down with the GCR structure?" So I said we have about 44 CGRs when we win a new piece of business. So Intel, for example, then that naturally creates a global client leader role because we do find more and more clients are asking for it. The sole for now, as I said, is that we have designated key client leaders. So across our top 100, they are key client leaders. But obviously, some of those, we believe, have more growth potential than others. So those KCLs will get support from the central team. They also have a community. They'll come to our client leader summit, which is in April. They have their own WhatsApp group, and they are also involved in the L&D work that we provide. So we're sort of testing that out, and our hope would be that we do grow with some of those clients and those KCLs become GCLs, which is a more formal role and more formally incented and managed. So that's that question. So another question here. I might throw this one -- I think both of you can answer this as well, but it's, "What's the balance between playing nice with consultants versus making sure WPP is winning its fair share in the growth there?" I mean, I'll kick off by saying we play nice with all the consultants. Laurent, who's our Global Head of New Business and Marketing, who many of you would have met, is an exceptionally nice man, which helps. And he works where the others got sense ]. But we need to push them, but you need to push them by being on it, by being tenacious, by being nice human beings, by proving your USPs, but you -- it's quite a lot of work. Carl, what about your experience in that?

Yes. I would say, look, if I were a client, I would use consultants, too. And we're in a long-term relationship, and sometimes it's good to have somebody coming from the outside and provide an objective opinion on what you need to benchmark yourself at or something like that. So again, in some ways, the BCG benchmarking is helping what we need to do. A lot of times, consultants come in and tell senior leadership at Colgate-Palmolive things that may be worth telling as well, and it just helps to have another voice in the mix. I would say the only -- they are trying to expand their business, just like we're trying to expand ours, and there are some products and services that they provide. They are squarely in our wheelhouse. And that's where I would say the advantage of the relationship usually pushes things into our court.

Sorry, I realize I answered it from a perspective of a pitch consultant. You can see my mind immediately goes -- went to that. But yes, one of the things that Alan Davies, who's our Head of our Business Transformation Community and looks at business transformation in general, he's developed relationships with each of the consultants to see actually where might we at times. We do pitch sometimes with consultants, where there is something structural at the start of a process that we don't believe we can do. And what we're trying to look to do is to maybe have 1 or 2 go-to-market examples of how that could best work. Because we think we probably will be stronger together, but it's just up to us to be really honest about where we think they can add value and where we don't answer the brief. Amy, do you work with any consultants on Intel?

Not with so much as alongside at this point, but I will say, just historical perspective, since I've worked on a lot of big technology projects, and consultants tend to show up in digital transformation and tech. Oftentimes, it's a matter of altitude. And perhaps a consultant is so far up in business case, and there is a big -- there is a relatively large gap between a super high-level business case and then also everything else that needs to happen before any of that becomes real and really drives value for our clients. So that can often be a distinction. I think maybe that's not readily apparent if you're just thinking about, of those 2 companies, they seem to do the same thing. Actually, when you get inside of it, and you see the dock, you see the output, the work is quite different. And often times, it's complementary, just like Lindsay and Carl were saying. Yes.

I'll take the next one, then there's a question for John. So there's a question about how do you onboard something like Coke from a GCL perspective. So Coke was already an existing client with revenues, not quite at the GBP 100 million mark, but was a significant client for us and has been for many years, but in quite a disparate form of it, like the chart that Carl -- both Carl and Amy showed, like the before chart because that was the way they were structured. So we are definitely onboarding them. We had 70 of the marketing needs where that's in sea containers past 2 weeks ago and 30 of the WPP team with them for 2, 4 days. It was actually the first time that many of those marketeers had met each other because many of them had changed jobs during COVID under Manolo's leadership and his own business transformation at Coke. So we are in -- I think we're still in a transition process, but we begin transformation, I believe, on April 1. And it has everyone's attention. When Mark talks about our priorities, this is the -- this is one of our #1 priorities in terms of making that model and that of the work. And actually, Coke are proving so far to be absolutely tremendous clients. We had around half of their media business. We onboarded the rest of their media business actually by Jan 1, and I'm not going to -- don't even need to touch word at this point. So we onboarded that incredibly smoothly. So that part of the transition went well. And, John, I'm not sure if you can see the questions, but a question for you. With so many aspects of the organization contributing to a large client's needs, how do you track costs?

It's nice to be asked a question. I'm not normally asked a question. So well, actually, the way our accounting systems work, we can actually -- we're actually able to slice our data through our operating agencies through our countries and also through our clients, so we can actually slice and dice our data through multiple lenses. So actually, we've got pretty good visibility on client performance, even if that's mapped across a number of different agencies, and that also applies to costs as well. And we actually did a piece of work in the last 12 months that just looked at how do we measure our client profitability. We changed the methodology slightly over time, but we've now got, in our view, a very accurate means of measuring our client profitability, and that's really important for us. Because, obviously, as we get changes to scope, as we win new work, as we deploy new resource against clients, it's very important that we have a pretty real-time understanding and impact of how that impacts our client profitability. And also, I think Lindsay talked a little bit about -- at the beginning about client satisfaction, and that clearly needs to be our #1 key performance indicator. But over time, we want to really be able to link client satisfaction with client profitability, with future revenue growth. We're not there yet in terms of having that very holistic enterprise-wide data model, but we're starting to build the component parts that will enable us to really sort of track performance over time and understand the key drivers that fundamentally underpin client profitability, but also, most importantly, our client satisfaction, which Lindsay really highlighted at the beginning.

Yes. And so Carl and Amy both have full visibility across all the agencies working on their business. They produce a growth plan. They look -- they can go into the system and look at the revenues at any time. And just as John runs with the main agency's budget, Q1, Q2, Q3 sessions, I also do one for the top 50 clients as well. So we look at it through lots of different angles, for sure. We've got lots of people looking at it and focused on it. Peregrine, I'm not sure if there's any more you want to. We're doing well on time, holding up. Are client -- there we go. Are client conflict still an issue? I think less and less, I'll hand over to Carl, who's nodding at me. But we generally work our way around them because the firewalls that you can put in place now, the adherence and the regulations that govern us mean that we can be fully transparent and show the systems and the protocols that we have in place. I actually believe that clients almost conversely care about us having expertise in their category and certainly expertise and capabilities and case studies on what other clients have done in the space. So rest assured, we have very strict and stringent contracts and some contracts that will go as far as naming obviously key personnel, but -- and restricting key personnel for a period of time after they've worked on the business. That's fairly standard, but I think we see it less and less. I remember that when I used to run one of our mediation, there was an incredibly long list of agencies, which is probably one of the reasons why we ended up at one stage with 5 media agencies. We're now back down to 4. But I think they do care about it less. And one of the reasons might be to the earlier point because consultants work with every single client in every single category. So if it's okay for them to do it, why would it not be okay for another professional services organization? But Carl, do you agree?

Yes. I would say I do think our protocols are much better than they used to be, and clients are very comfortable with that, that we're not -- if I'm working on Colgate today, make sure I'm not working on a competitor tomorrow. But they also -- you can't say I want the best of WPP and expect WPP just to be Colgate. So I think they recognize the more big clients we have who are attracting talent, then the more talent that they'll have to draw from.

Great. Well, I think we are almost done. There was one point that actually. Carl, I wanted you -- would love you to just touch on, which was about the ease of navigation. And maybe if you can talk briefly about Navigator and then your version of Navigator, which other people are following, just to close us.

All right. And sorry, I didn't pick up on the hint before. So Lindsay's team has created a great tool for navigating WPP and find -- there's great search capability, where if I need a design agency in Thailand, I can figure out who's there. If I need an e-commerce agency in Malaysia, I can figure out who's there. And so we -- I put a front end on it for the Colgate clients. And now the IBE leads Colgate, who manage the agency relationship, can do their own searches and try to find which capabilities. I asked them to go through me and not to go directly to those agencies, just so everybody can be moderated. But that's a huge -- there isn't probably a day that goes by that I'm not using that tool in some capacity. So technology is definitely helping us make the complexity simpler.

Yes. It's a great example. And actually, we've got 5 of our top 10 clients now asking for their own version of that Navigator as well. So yes, so thank you very much for your time and your questions. I hope you found it helpful and interesting the benefit of having, in real life, Amy and Carl explain what their job is, what it involves and how they pull together. Because I'm always asked about models, and the answer is always there are always slightly different models for every single client. But hopefully, you saw their passion, their expertise and the way that they pull together all the resources to really give the best of, which is always the ask. So thank you, John, for kicking us off and Peregrine for organizing, and we'll sign out.