8th December 2025
WPP’s annus horribilis is ending with another blow – it’s been relegated from the FTSE 100. Greensquare’s Barry Dudley draws an unlikely parallel to the comeback story of M&S that might give CEO Cindy Rose hope that it can make a return.
You have probably already heard about the staggering drop in WPP’s stock market value, but just in case, a mere eight years ago it stood at £24bn. It now languishes at around £3.2bn. In 2025 alone the share price has dropped over 60%. And now there has been a rather symbolic moment to add insult to injury, as WPP has been relegated from the FTSE 100. Replaced by British Land, in case you wondered.
Is this the end of an era? Surely there is no way back? Or is there…
Not long ago, M&S was shorthand for a tired British institution: overexposed to shrinking high streets, lagging behind in digital, confused about its customer, and carrying a bloated estate that looked increasingly like a museum to a bygone model of retail. By 2019, years of sliding clothing sales, the slow erosion of its once‑dominant food halo and a late move into e‑commerce culminated in stock market humiliation: it dropped out of the FTSE 100 for the first time since the index began in 1984.
The numbers told a simple story. Profit warnings had undermined City confidence. Online pure‑plays were winning baskets; fast fashion was winning wardrobes. The brand that once defined the middle of Britain’s high street no longer seemed to know who it was for. When the pandemic hit, it accelerated trends that were already in motion: fewer shoppers in town centres, burgeoning baskets online, greater expectations of convenience, price transparency and purpose.
The reinvention of M&S did not begin with a big‑bang campaign, but with a very un‑romantic admission: the model was broken. Under CEO’s Steve Rowe and later Stuart Machin, the company embarked on a wide‑ranging reset that looked, from the outside, more like a private‑equity playbook than a traditional plc tidy‑up. Hundreds of legacy high street stores were either closed, relocated or reshaped into food‑led formats. Capital was reallocated into retail parks of the future and mixed‑use locations that actually matched modern shopping patterns.
At the same time, M&S finally committed to digital. Clothing and home were overhauled online: navigation simplified, imagery upgraded, returns made smoother, and the ranges sharpened with fewer, better options. Data started to drive decisions on ranging and markdowns rather than merchandisers’ instinct. Its Sparks loyalty scheme was rebuilt into a data engine that could power personalised offers and smarter media planning, rather than being based around a dusty plastic card at the bottom of a purse.
The brand proposition itself was narrowed and made sharper. In clothing, M&S stopped trying to be everything to everyone and doubled down on being the dependable, good‑quality, fashion‑aware choice for a clearly defined broad middle. In food, it leaned harder into distinctiveness and quality at accessible treat prices.
A mixture of external agencies and in-house capabilities were used over this period, but one constant was WPP’s very own Mindshare.
By 2023, the impact was visible in the financial performance and in perception data. Profits and market share moved in the right direction, clothing was no longer the Achilles’ heel, and food remained a fortress. When M&S was readmitted to the FTSE 100 it signalled that a legacy British brand, written off by many, had managed to re‑wire its economics and identity at the same time – and persuade investors that its best days were not necessarily behind it.
For Cindy Rose at WPP, looking up from a very different set of spreadsheets, this M&S chapter perhaps offers a useful, if imperfect mirror. WPP’s relegation from the FTSE 100 crystallises a fear that the old holding company model – built for a world of 30‑second TV spots and annual media deals – has been left behind by platforms, consultancies and AI‑native specialists.
Like M&S in 2019, WPP is grappling with structural, not merely cyclical, change. It faces client budget pressure, insourcing of certain capabilities, the gravitational pull of the big platforms, and a bruising few years of profit warnings and downgrades. Under previous leadership it has made steps to simplify its structure and lean into data and technology, but the story has not yet convinced the market. Rose, arriving with a background steeped in technology and platforms, inherits not just a market value and perception to fix, but a story to rewrite.
The M&S playbook does not transfer neatly, but there are perhaps some themes. The first is radical portfolio honesty. Just as M&S took a scalpel to the long tail of under‑performing stores, WPP may need to look again at where it is structurally advantaged and where it is not – across agencies, geographies, and capabilities. That will almost certainly mean further consolidation, exits from low‑margin activities, and heavier bets on areas where clients will still pay a premium: true brand strategy, creative that travels culture, high‑end production, complex integrated media, and business‑changing experience design.
The second is to treat data and AI less as tools and more as the operating spine. M&S did not simply declare itself omnichannel; it rebuilt its digital offer and loyalty infrastructure so that promises could be delivered in real time. For WPP, that logic translates into an integrated, group‑wide data and AI infrastructure that runs through creative, media and commerce, rather than separate agencies reinventing the wheel. That might include things such as common measurement frameworks, responsibly governed first‑party data partnerships, and a clear strategy around AI that actually improves margins and work quality.
A third parallel is around focus and proposition. M&S found its footing again when it stopped apologising for being M&S and doubled down on a distinct, middle‑Britain promise. WPP has an opportunity to stop acting like a fragmented federation and state more clearly what a WPP client should experience that is difficult to replicate elsewhere. Does a WPP engagement feel meaningfully different – faster, more joined‑up, more accountable – versus stitching together a platform, a consulting firm and a production shop?
There is also a cultural lesson. M&S’s turnaround was as much about shifting internal mindsets as swapping out signage. Store managers had to be empowered to act on data, buyers to look beyond gut instinct, and central teams to move faster. WPP, spanning tens of thousands of people, will need its own version: incentives that reward collaboration and client outcomes, not only individual agency P&Ls; talent strategies that attract AI‑native creatives and engineers; and an internal narrative that makes the new WPP feel like a place where careers in the future of advertising are built, not where they go to wind down.
Finally, there are the questions of time and storytelling. M&S did not pivot in a single year, it learnt to narrate progress convincingly to customers and investors, using proof along the way – store openings that felt new, digital metrics that improved, ranges that sold out for the right reasons. Rose will need to do something similar for WPP: set out a small number of clear, measurable commitments on growth, margin, simplification and client satisfaction, and then report against them in a language that resonates.
Can the big holding company operating model evolve as convincingly as a high‑street retail stalwart that once seemed past saving? Will Rose be afforded the time to go on such a journey? Or will Dawn French’s M&S fairy have to lend her wand to the WPP Board?