Few people have had a front-row seat to advertising's transformation quite like Rob Reilly, Global Chief Creative Officer of WPP. Brought into WPP by Mark Read, the former CEO with the ambition of making the company "the most creative company on the planet", Reilly has spent the last five years helping steer the world's largest advertising network through a period defined by consolidation, artificial intelligence and changing client expectations. The creative results have been hard to ignore. WPP emerged as one of the most awarded companies at Cannes Lions and consistently bagged the Creative company of the year title for four years straight.
But, the industry Reilly operates in today looks very different from the one he joined. Agency groups are consolidating. Clients are demanding greater efficiency. AI is changing how work gets produced. Even Cannes Lions has come under scrutiny, with entry volumes reportedly down this year following tighter rules and increased oversight. Against that backdrop, WPP is also navigating a more challenging business environment. The group reported a 6.6% decline in Q1, while markets such as China and the Middle East posted double-digit declines. India, however, remained one of the brighter spots, registering growth at a time when many major markets struggled.
Speaking with Neeta Nair, Editor, IMPACT Magazine, at Cannes Lions 2026, Reilly was candid about the pressures facing the industry. Beyond economic cycles and market fluctuations, he believes agencies are confronting a deeper challenge. "We're suffering from a pretty antiquated commercial model," he said, arguing that the industry is still searching for better ways to be compensated, whether through outcome-based arrangements or new revenue streams tied to production and enterprise solutions.
Reilly also believes the industry's next growth engines will come from areas such as production and enterprise solutions, where clients are increasingly looking for efficiency and scale. At the same time, he pushed back against the idea that creativity should be viewed as a separate vertical within agency businesses. Whether the work sits within media, production or enterprise solutions, the quality of the ideas remains critical. "It doesn't matter if we have great enterprise solutions. It doesn't matter if we have great media. It doesn't matter if what's going through there isn't great," he said. "It worked, but it could have worked so much better if the quality of the content and the ideas are better."
At the same time, he remains convinced that creativity is becoming more valuable, not less. As AI makes it easier to generate content at scale, the real differentiator will be ideas. "Everybody's going to be able to make work that looks pretty good, but might lack an idea," he said. "The future to me is highly concepted, highly obsessed and highly crafted work." The conversation repeatedly returned to the role of human creativity in an increasingly automated world. Reilly rejected the notion that AI should simply be viewed as another tool in the agency toolkit. Instead, he described it as an instrument. "AI is not a tool. AI is an instrument," he said. "A guitar in Rob Rilley's hands? Not very good. A guitar in Prince's hands? It's magic."
Watch the full conversation here:
For Reilly, the technology only amplifies talent; it does not replace it. The quality of the output still depends on the quality of the people using it. "What you need is human creativity, but the best humans, not just humans," he said.
India featured prominently throughout the discussion. When asked which Indian campaigns he was backing at Cannes, Reilly refused to single out individual pieces of work. Instead, he made a broader point about the country's importance to WPP. "We bet on India every year," he said. "We're counting on India every year to bring magical work. And they do."
He described India as home to some of the smartest and most driven talent in the world and suggested that the country remains one of the strongest examples of how network agencies continue to thrive creatively. While acknowledging that some years are more challenging than others, he maintained that India consistently delivers the creative firepower global networks depend on.
Addressing India’s emergence as one of the brighter spots in WPP's recent performance, he said. "When you have that level of buying power, when you have that level of influence, when you have the best talent in the world on that side, combined with incredible creative talent, it's a winning model," he said.
Reilly was also quick to caution against reading too much into a single quarter's numbers. "Sometimes those numbers are misleading," he said, pointing instead to WPP's momentum in new business. The company has led recent media new-business rankings and secured creative wins including Henkel. "You can look at the negative numbers, but I look at what we've done positively." He also credited Cindy Rose, CEO, WPP for helping accelerate the company's transformation. Less than a year into the role, Rose has already overseen major decisions around agency structure, enterprise solutions and production capabilities. "We're all rowing in the same direction," Reilly said. "It sounds so obvious, but it's incredibly powerful."
That same confidence extends to WPP's agency brands as well. Reilly was asked about the contrast between Ogilvy and VML in India. While VML continues to strengthen its global creative reputation and is enjoying a strong Cannes, he acknowledged that the agency has yet to command the same level of recognition in India as Ogilvy, which remains one of the country's most established creative powerhouses. Reilly suggested that Ogilvy's long-standing reputation has made the challenge unique to India, but argued that creative performance ultimately shapes perception. "Results are going to be the thing that people look at," he said. As VML continues to produce more work that earns attention and drives conversations, he believes its standing will inevitably grow. "It's not a question of if, it's a question of when," he adds.
Consolidation was another recurring theme. WPP has spent the last few years simplifying its structure, bringing agencies closer together and creating what Reilly describes as a more collaborative operating model. He pointed to Grey's move into the Ogilvy fold as an example of that thinking, arguing that the two networks share strengths in brand-building, social, influencer marketing and innovation. At the same time, AKQA has been given greater clarity around its role as a future-facing specialist business, while VML continues to operate as WPP's largest integrated network.
"A company like Grey now has access to every capability inside of WPP," Reilly said. The bigger shift, however, is the removal of financial and operational barriers that once made collaboration between agencies more difficult. Capabilities spanning commerce, PR, media and creativity can now be brought together far more easily under a shared structure. For Reilly, the objective is not simply efficiency, but ensuring that money is spent on talent and client-facing capabilities rather than duplicated functions across agencies.
Reilly also dismissed the notion that a more integrated structure would dilute healthy competition between agencies. "Creative people are competitive," he said. "There's always competition because people are people." What has changed, according to him, is the level of collaboration among WPP's creative leaders. He pointed to the relationship between VML Global CCO Debbi Vandeven and Ogilvy Global CCO Liz Taylor as an example, noting that what might once have been rivalry has evolved into genuine partnership. More broadly, Reilly believes WPP has assembled an extraordinary concentration of creative leadership across its agencies. Referring to leaders such as Gav Thompson at Grey, Peter Lund at AKQA and Taj Reid at Burson, he described the group as "a murderer's row of creative talent."
That creative culture, he argued, is one of WPP's biggest competitive advantages. "We're the creative company that fully believes in creativity being a force multiplier for growth," he said. Attracting talent, in his view, is not complicated. "Creative people are simple. Pay us fairly. Believe in creativity as a growth driver. And don't lie to us."
The discussion eventually turned to Cannes Lions itself. This year's festival has seen a decline in entries by 25%, following stricter rules introduced after concerns around manipulated case studies and questionable submissions. Reilly defended the event, describing it as one of the few places where marketers, technologists, creatives, artists and production experts gather in one place. He, however, rejected the increasingly common criticism that Cannes has drifted away from creativity.
He acknowledged that the festival has spent the past year trying to address legitimate concerns. "There were some mistakes made last year," he said. Reilly argued that part of the problem stemmed from the industry's obsession with awards and rankings. "I do think these holding company of the year awards and network of the year awards have caused some bad behaviour because the pressure to win is so high," he said. Recognition, he argued, should increasingly shift towards the brands willing to take creative risks and the people making the work rather than the holding companies themselves. While WPP has enjoyed considerable success on the Cannes stage, Reilly insisted the company's priorities have evolved. "We're not chasing Network of the Year," he said. "We're chasing our brands and winning, our people, especially young people, winning."
Reilly also defended Cannes' decision to tighten entry requirements following last year's controversies, even if some of the new processes initially proved cumbersome. Referring to concerns around manipulated case studies and the use of AI, he was unequivocal. "If people use AI to doctor campaigns again, hopefully it's a lifetime ban," he said. If stricter rules result in fewer entries but a stronger and more credible festival, he concluded, that may ultimately be a trade-off worth making.
