Rob Reilly on Winning the EGOT of Advertising 3 Years Running

WARC’s Creative 100 is a global showcase of the world’s best 100 campaigns and 50 top agencies, networks, brands, advertisers, countries and holding companies, evaluated using their success at creative award shows throughout the year.

The Ascential-owned company scores points for work based on their placement at the likes of Cannes Lions, The One Show, the Effies and more, and considers the competition within each winner’s category. In 2025, WARC named WPP the top holding company for creativity for the third consecutive year, assisted by Ogilvy and VML landing first and second place in the network rankings. The former claims its fifth number one ranking in a row.

“If you believe in these things, this is the thing to win,” WPP’s global CCO Rob Reilly tells LBB’s Ben Conway. “It’s the EGOT of the advertising and creative world. It means you’ve done well at all the important shows – The One Show, Effies, Cannes…

“To win it three years in a row feels really good,” he adds. “Consistency is the most important thing. And the four years I've been here, I’ve seen incredible consistency from all of our agencies. And while all the companies – AKQA, Grey, DAVID, our media companies in GroupM and production companies in Hogarth – have contributed, it definitely feels great to have the top two networks in the world at WPP.”

But while the winning feeling is good, Rob believes that awards are merely the byproduct, not the motivation, of doing what’s right for clients. And for him, that means creative which moves the business and has a lasting impact.

“It's not a complicated business,” he says. “Brands partner with you to deliver breakthrough ideas that lead to bold and widely successful business results… Results are the most important thing. If we’re winning awards but our brands that we shepherd are not doing well, that’s an F [grade].”

His belief in excellent creativity as a key to business success is reflected in modern award shows and their juries, he adds, explaining how the likes of Cannes have dedicated research into this link and curated savvier groups of jurors who understand the business’ products, services, movements and philosophies in conjunction with the creativity.

“The reason I care so much about doing bold ideas that lead to great results is that everybody then wants to do it again. It’s a way to get people addicted to it.”

He continues, “So it's always been about [business] results. Results are really the only thing that matters. Obviously, you want to keep moving forward with innovation and be a great place to work… we are artists and use a tremendous amount of artistry, but we are in the commerce business. That's why people are called ‘starving artists’ – I'm interested in making artful, beautiful work that is impactful and bold, but it has to work or I'm in the wrong business.

“I want people excited that we're making an impact on society and on culture, but also an impact on the bottom line for our clients. That's how we get to do it again.”

In the pursuit of getting clients hooked on creativity, the industry has occasionally drawn a somewhat unhelpful line between purpose work for societal impact and creative work for business impact. Though, this separation appears to be fading; one familiar brand to WPP in Unilever even called for ‘purpose’ to be rebranded in an interview with LBB’s Laura Swinton last year.

Of ‘purpose work’, Rob takes perhaps an unexpected stance: “There’s not enough of it, for me!”

He explains, “It’s not one or the other [business success or societal impact]. Young people especially will choose a brand based on what else they’re doing in the world right now. Dove is a perfect example. Everything being equal, someone at the shelf will choose Dove because they’ve supported women in meaningful ways. Or Vaseline because they’ve supported communities like the transgender community in Thailand with Ogilvy’s Transition Body Lotion. This isn’t just to win awards, it’s had a tremendous impact on people in that country, on Unilever and Vaseline as a brand, and on their sales in that market.”

He notes that because people are pushing back on purpose, due to the perceived large quantity in the industry and at award shows in recent years, anything new must be “really connected” to the products and “even more clever” in doing so. In this, he sees a valuable path forward. “When governments don't really have the opportunity or the means to support people, brands can keep doing it, and I hope we don't lose that. The best way to keep it going is to make sure that it leads to business results.”

To achieve this, he says that business results can’t just be quantified as a return on investment. “It's the overall way you show up in the world which will lead to how you're perceived. We don't know if a young person is going to choose Dove because they saw a commercial, or because they saw what Dove did in the world and will choose that brand because they did the right thing – besides the brand also being a great product. They might even pay more for it!”

Campaigns out of the US for Dove, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Verizon and CeraVe all contributed to WPP’s success in the WARC rankings, with the soda giant being “the best articulation” of WPP’s work, according to Rob, when it comes to media, production, AI, creativity and business results. “It's probably the best example of a brand fully investing in us and embedding us in every facet of the business. People are excited to work on it too. You see a brand caring about creativity, technology and innovative media solutions – people raise their hands; ‘How can I get on that?’.”

This shared belief in creativity is something that Rob and WPP’s other leaders have worked to instill throughout its networks since he joined four years ago, sparked by CEO Mark Read’s ambition to become ‘the most creative company in the world’.

“We invest £300m a year in technology, and we invest in the best people – strategy people, account people, creative people - so there’s a commitment to creativity and we believe it's the world's most valuable asset,” says Rob. “We're pretty far along on AI too, and using it to transform how we're creating for the world's biggest brands. So we've bet on technology and we’ve bet on creativity. GroupM is one of the biggest media companies and our production arm is getting stronger and stronger. It's all coming together right now.

“But it starts at the top,” he adds. “When the CEOs want great creativity to happen, it happens. And Mark does [want that], and all the CEOs of all of our companies all believe the same thing. We believe it is the difference maker.”

By repeatedly reinforcing this belief and investing in the right places and people, Rob believes that the past three consecutive WARC wins are proof that WPP has become “the most consistent, creative company” since his arrival.

“Within our walls, no one is confused as to our belief in creativity. I don't know if you can say that about every company. We've been clear about it, and we've spent a lot of time talking about it internally,” he says. “There are a lot of clients who really believe in creativity too. There’s a lot of focus on other things like performance marketing, but in the end, people know you need big, bold ideas to break through and land in culture; ideas that people talk about, write about, share and love.”

As we enter the last nerve-wracking month of eligibility for Cannes 2025, Rob shares that his optimism for creativity this year extends beyond the walls of WPP. “We are all one tribe together. I want WPP to do well but I want everybody to do well. We need to make sure we're bringing giant ideas into the world that move the needle and impact the business. So I root for everybody.”

A particular area of interest for him is health marketing, a sector previously maligned with a less than creative reputation. But now, he says, it has gotten “exponentially better year on year”, becoming a place where many are starting their careers to find even more meaning in what they do. “This is the place where you can wake up every day and ask, can I make a difference? And you usually do.”

He adds, “Hopefully we win some awards in health but we definitely have some brilliant brands we're working with, and when we apply creativity to them you really see that not only might it win an award, but it might save somebody's life or really change things for families and communities.”

Rob also highlights creator marketing and AI as two other trends that will shape the next year of awards, describing the latter as a tool for getting an advantage for clients in culture – WPP’s Open platform being at the core of these efforts. “AI is going to be the greatest tool and the most cataclysmic (in a positive way) revolution we’ve seen,” he says. “You combine that with the rise of the creator economy and how many people are getting the opportunity to make content and impact people’s lives, it’s an awesome time to be part of the business.”

The CCO adds that he wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years there were 50 categories for creators at Cannes – but being a seasoned veteran in the industry, it’s no mean feat to surprise Rob nowadays.

“It's not because the work isn't spectacular, I just expect it from this industry,” he explains. “Every year I know something great is coming. That's why the Innovation Lions are always magical, especially if it’s something more than a prototype. [Where] you're like: ‘That came from an ad agency?’.

“If I wasn't doing this, I’d want to invent things. I'd want to be a product inventor,” he adds, laughing about his inventor resume currently being pinned on his involvement in developing Burger King’s Chicken Fries. “That can't be my legacy! Not that I don't love them…”

“I always say the goal is to make something that will outlive you. And there are a couple things in the world that I've been a part of that are still going on, 25 years later. ‘Small Business Saturday’ and ‘Fearless Girl’ [are] things that will hopefully outlive me,” he says.

“That's really the measure – have you created something that has a long, lasting impact? A little girl might see something and 30 years later become president – that's the goal I think we all have as creative people in advertising. Can you make something that has a lasting impact way beyond your lifetime? It rarely happens but when it does, it motivates you to keep going and start the next day.”