WPP drops as major client Unilever slashes ad costs

Bloomberg

WPP Plc fell the most in a month after one of the advertising company’s biggest clients, consumer-product giant Unilever, said it would cut back on its marketing spending, fueling concerns about a broader ad-industry slowdown.
Unilever, which sells Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise, will produce 30 percent fewer ads as part of a cost-cutting drive, Chief Financial Officer Graeme Pitkethly said on Thursday in a phone interview. WPP, whose Ogilvy & Mather agency makes ads for Dove, dropped as much as 4.4 percent, the most since March 3.
The blow came as WPP, the world’s largest advertising company, was already contending with a slow start to 2017 and a weaker-than-expected growth forecast. Auto sales are sagging and consumer-products companies, in response to slowing growth, are looking for ways to save money on advertising and simplify their commitments. Business with Unilever contributes about 3 percent of WPP’s revenue, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Big advertisers are cutting their marketing spend,” said Claire Barbaret, an analyst at Invest Securities in Paris. “All of them are trying to cut their costs because we’re in a world where there’s not much growth.”
London-based WPP declined 1.8 percent to 1,707 pence at 11:59 a.m. in London, after dipping as low as 1,662 pence. French rival Publicis Groupe SA, which in February reported disappointing 2016 results, fell less than 1 percent to 64.34 euros in Paris. In December, WPP’s GroupM forecast a 4.4 percent increase in global advertising to $547 billion this year.
Unilever didn’t give details on its spending plans. The company, which is also selling off its spreads business, aims to reduce the number of creative agencies it employs by about half, Pitkethly said on a call with investors — a move which could benefit large agency owners like WPP. Unilever said it will reduce the number of consultants it employs by around 40 percent.
The moves by Unilever mirror those of Procter & Gamble Co., the world’s biggest advertiser, which said on Wednesday that it’s halved the number of agencies it works with globally. “We fed the agency beast by hiring thousands of them,” P&G Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard said at an American Association of Advertising Agencies conference in Los Angeles.