The board’s next move is less about succession than direction. WPP has spent the last decade pivoting — to data, to commerce, to consulting — often all at once. Now comes the hard part: deciding what kind of holding company it wants to be in a landscape shaped by AI, platforms and relentless efficiency. WPP plans to conduct a search for a replacement, which is in part why Read will stay on the rest of 2025.

As Forrester’s vp principal analyst Jay Pattisall, put it, “Mark Read’s successor must be able to look around corners for media and creativity, while maintaining the operational realities. It’s a rare executive to fit all those at once.”

Brian Lesser

The name most frequently floated is Brian Lesser, CEO of WPP Media and a returning exec with deep institutional roots. Lesser is fluent in the kind of operational restructuring clients say they want — and the kind that rarely wins headlines. In the months since he returned in November, he has reorganized the media division around products, not portfolios, cut staff and emphasized integrations between data and clients. Less brand gloss, more systems thinking.

His candidacy feels inevitable. He extends Read’s structural sensibility with arguably sharper execution — and fewer sentimental attachments. But there are limits to pragmatism. Holding companies still have to project vision, not just value. Clients want control and efficiency but they don’t want to be bored.  

Matt Barash, chief commercial officer at Nova, told Digiday that there is a common misconception of Lesser, who was formerly the CEO of GroupM’s agency trading desk, Xaxis, in the mid-2010s, as “an ad tech guy.”

Instead, Barash, a long-time associate of Lesser, characterized him as someone who recognizes the need for differentiation to win new client business and focus on defensibility to retain those clients. 

“Agencies are stuck playing defense to keep client business by any means necessary, but he’s building a stickier model with data at the core,” he said, adding that Lesser has an “uncanny ability to see around corners and identify the next big thing … He’s a product marketer who knows how to tell a great story and get the market to buy in.”

Emily Del Greco

Which is where Emily Del Greco enters the conversation. She joined WPP earlier this year from McKinsey and now leads global client solutions for WPP Media. She’s the rare hybrid: strategic but not detached, consultative without the PowerPoint fog. Her background spans editorial sales at Vogue, ad tech roles at Adelphic and Google, and a long stint running her own consultancy before jumping into the agency world at MightyHive. She’s advised CMOs. She’s lived the fragmentation most holding companies are still trying to make sense of. 

“Del Greco could drive a deeply strategic consultative direction that WPP as a whole could benefit from, and she has a very strong reputation both internally and externally,” said Ruben Schreurs, CEO of media management firm Ebiquity. 

Still, there’s reason to temper the enthusiasm. Del Greco is fundamentally a sales leader — aggressive and effective, by most accounts, during her agency-side years. If her name is truly in contention, it may reflect a board eager to refocus on revenue growth and new business wins. But she’s only been at WPP a matter of months — a short runway for someone being considered to run the entire company. 

Stephan Pretorius

Given the holdco’s emphasis on generative AI — several announcements in the last few weeks have hammered that message home — one scenario could involve WPP’s chief AI architect getting the chance to run the company: Stephan Pretorius. And he’s been a WPP insider for nearly a decade as not only chair of AKQA but also the U.K. CEO of Wunderman. It’s safe to say he’s somewhat familiar with the WPP way of running things — while spearheading its new direction. 

“The obvious candidate for me would be someone like Stephan given the direction of the industry, not just WPP, is heading so clearly towards AI, data technology,” said Ryan Kangisser, MediaSense’s chief strategy officer. “I think they’re going to need that type of profile if they’re going to transform the business and not just transform structurally.”

To Kangisser’s thinking, this isn’t the time to go with a safe “traditional” kind of CEO. “That professional CEO, I don’t know how resonant that is when there is so much instability in the market,” he said, whereas Pretorius “has got presence and tremendous expertise.” 

David Droga

Speaking of presence, then there’s David Droga. 

Just weeks ago, his name would’ve read like fan fiction. Now, with his announced transition out of the CEO role at Accenture Song, the speculation feels more grounded. Droga moving into a vice chair role clears his schedule. Read’s exit cracks open a possibility. 

“My money is on David Droga, and this may already be in motion considering his departure at Accenture Song two weeks ago followed by the announcement of Read’s exit,” said Ruben Schreurs, CEO of media management firm Ebiquity. “He would bring the kind of charismatic leadership WPP would benefit from immensely with his transformative, forward-looking, integrated mindset and track record.”

Droga would be a departure — not just from Read but from the entire logic of the modern holding company. His strength has always been creative conviction, not cautious optimization. And yet, his year’s at Accenture proved he’s more than an ideas guy. At Accenture, he managed the improbable: embedding a brand-first ethos inside a consulting giant and helping to grow revenue from $12 billion to nearly $20 billion. His potential appointment would be less about continuity and more about (perceived) course correction. 

If WPP were to name him CEO, it would be more than a leadership decision, It would be a provocation. A signal that the company still believes in the emotional power of brand, even after years spent chasing margin, scale and operational clarity. It would also raise the more dangerous question: can a company optimized for spreadsheets still contain a leader optimized for feeling? Droga would not run WPP. He would try to reawaken it. That’s either thrilling or terrifying. Possibly both.  

Philip Jansen

WPP’s chairman for the last year sees the opportunity for new thinking at the top as he ultimately signed off on replacing Read. He’s got CEO chops from his stint at British Telecom — as well as an iron will to cut whatever needs to be cut based on that BT tenure.

Might he engineer a fresh wave of cutbacks at WPP if he takes over as chairman and CEO? That’s the paradox at the head of WPP now. Its value lies in its sprawl — the vastness of its offerings, its global reach, its theoretical ability to serve every client need from data to display, and even its harnessing of AI. And yet that same sprawl is what makes it so difficult to steer.

Read tried to tame the beast with order and systems. His successor will be asked to do more to make it feel coherent, modern, and maybe even interesting again.

https://digiday.com/?p=580506