WPP and Jaguar Land Rover cannot cut their way back to greatness, says Chris Hunton

Chris Hunton argues that WPP and its client Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) are dealing with the same underlying problem: each has let slip the distinctive qualities that once made it formidable.

He points to an irony in the timing. Earlier this year WPP announced, as part of its “turnaround to Elevate28”, that it had again won the whole of the JLR business. That win, Hunton says, now looks less impressive as JLR signals thousands of job cuts.

Both companies, in his view, are British icons of their sectors that are reducing headcount while facing fierce competition and wider market pressures. Readers with patriotic leanings will hope both recover, he writes, but the road ahead looks treacherous.

WPP’s missing proposition

Hunton says it remains to be seen whether WPP can move from its legacy holding company structure to the “single operating company” sought by chief executive Cindy Rose.

Whatever the restructuring, AI investment and consolidation of resources into WPP Creative, he argues that the group still needs a clear creative value proposition to separate it from Publicis, Omnicom and nimbler rivals such as Stagwell and The Brandtech Group. He cites Mark Ritson’s argument that WPP must also decide whether it can operate as a branded house and a house of brands at the same time.

That task is harder, Hunton says, while redundancies continue as the business tries to cut costs and satisfy analysts. He suggests that the relief that greeted WPP’s recent Q2 results came mostly from savings linked to its large headcount reduction. WPP still expects a “mid to low single-digit decline in revenue” this year.

He suggests WPP could look back 25 years, to when it offered clients something genuinely different. Its model of a single team working across several channels under one global client leader has been widely copied since, but at the time it stood out. A unified team and a single cost point across major channels appealed to clients including HSBC, BP and Ford.

This “horizontality” approach of bespoke client teams gave WPP an advantage in pitches, Hunton writes, even though the separate P&Ls of its operating companies meant it never worked quite so smoothly in practice. Add Sir Martin Sorrell’s energy as a salesman and “client whisperer”, and it made WPP close to unstoppable.

JLR’s lost capability equity

Hunton expects JLR to blame its difficulties on a mix of the shift to electric vehicles, a cyberattack, tariffs and the influx of Asian brands such as Jaecoo selling comparable cars for much less.

Yet 25 years ago, setting aside what he calls “the perennial financial basket case that was Jaguar”, the group’s brand model was simple and compelling. Land Rover’s capability, practicality and strong advertising kept adding equity to Range Rover. That let Range Rover charge a large premium as a luxury 4×4 while keeping the toughness that helped it shrug off jibes such as “Chelsea tractor”.

With the basic Land Rover Defender, the “farmer’s friend”, now out of production and the Discovery turned into another sleek, curvy vehicle rather than a big, boxy example of form following function, Hunton argues that much of that equity has gone.

JLR can cite record profits for the year to March 2025, but he contends it was still living off the brand’s past. As younger buyers grow up knowing little of the Land Rover story, which started with a sketch in the sand on a beach in North Wales, he says the company will struggle to justify its premium among many similar-looking luxury SUVs.

Reputational damage

Hunton sees a further parallel in the PR crises that changed how each company was perceived. The exit of Sir Martin Sorrell and the months of wrangling that followed dented WPP’s air of impregnability. Jaguar’s ‘Copy Nothing’ rebrand, he argues, was misjudged so badly that it damaged the credibility of JLR as a whole.

He writes that something “toe-curlingly awful” can sometimes still do a brand good, but not here. Despite the scale of the backlash, Jaguar pressed on with the strategy at its Miami launch, and Hunton says the campaign came close to “brand-killing territory” for Jaguar, nearly disproving the old saying about there being no such thing as bad publicity.

In his view, cost cuts, restructures and reinvention may buy both businesses time, but “neither WPP nor JLR can shrink its way back to greatness.” Each once had a proposition that was immediately understood and hard to imitate, and each now needs to find one again.

Hunton, who says he played “a very minor part in the history of each”, wishes both well but adds that sentiment will only go so far. “The real test is whether either can once again give customers a compelling reason to choose them.”