Mark Read, as chief executive of WPP Digital, part of UK-based communications services group WPP, is overseeing the entire group’s transition to the digital age, which it is pursuing through corporate venturing and other tools such as acquisition.
Read said: “I spend most of my time focused on our new media strategy. Digital is now 35% of revenue. What we are trying to do is digitise the group. What we intend to do digitally is prepare our so-called traditional businesses for the digital future as well as develop new digital services. The strategy goes back to my predecessor, Eric Salama. It is something we have been doing for a while.”
The company has netted some successes under Read. Recently two companies it has backed, Omniture and Buddy Media, secured big exits.
He said: “On Omniture we made a $35m gain while on Buddy Media we made around $60m. Not everything is successful. At the moment we don’t have a separate dedicated fund but are tightly integrated into our operating companies.”
WPP hired Tom Bedecarré, founder of agency AKQA, to run WPP Ventures in Silicon Valley last year. The group secured another exit from its portfolio this year, when Jumptap was bought by Millenial Media. It also invested in Fullscreen, Globant and Mutual Mobile this year.
The company seeks to secure both financial and strategic returns. Read said: “Buddy Media clearly has been our biggest financial success. If you measure success by how we have connected a large company to a lot of the innovation that is going on, that is hard to measure.”
WPP seeks to plug its portfolio companies into important relationships. Read said: “We took Buddy Media into a meeting with Facebook, as our partner.”
Michael Lazerow, chief executive of Buddy Media, said: “Mark straddles the worlds of big advertising media, creativity and the creative agencies, and he is someone who understands all sides of the table. He helped us as a young company realise our dream. He can see things through young companies’ eyes and large agency networks. Business is not a zero-sum game. Everyone has to win to get value out of a partnership. With Mark, it was not just how can we benefit from the great relationship with Buddy Media, but how can we help Buddy Media?”
Read became chief executive of WPP Digital in March 2005. He has also been WPP’s director of strategy since 2002. He is a member of the supervisory board of HighCo and a director of CHI & Partners. He worked at WPP between 1989 and 1995. Prior to rejoining WPP in 2002, he was a principal at consultancy Booz-Allen & Hamilton and founded UK-based company WebRewards, which was sold to iPoints in 2002.
What is the future of your sector?
Read said: “Key priorities for us in our sector are mobile, e-commerce, content, data and analytics and social media. The persistent trend is that companies are founded and can grow even more quickly and cheaply, look at the explosion and growth of Snapchat inside two years into a company that can turn down a $3bm offer from Facebook while only having 28 employees. This is driven by the importance of mobile, the growth of the cloud and services like Amazon Web Services and the companies built on top of AWS that can accelerate growth.”