Nov 2, 2026 · 30 min · 13 segments
**Welcome to Agency Business.** This week Alan Brown, founder of DNA&STONE, joins…
Brian WieserHost
Olivia MorleyHost
All right, well, first of all, we had WPP producing their third quarter results.
But that's still better than where they were, and they're kind of maintaining targets.
You know, one standout number for me was that North America, the gross revenue number was up a very significant amount.
What was it? 10.6%? While the net revenue was up negative one for organic, meaning there's an awful lot of pass-throughs, which one could infer was principle-based activity.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I thought that was kind of notable given how big that gulf was.
And I was also interested in the fact that Sydney Rose is very AI positive and speaking openly about hiring agents to reduce headcount and increase margin.
Yeah, it really does feel like, again, I'm relatively positive, I think, on the AI story for agencies at this point in time.
I mean, it's nothing new in a sense, but that creative line was actually, you know, it looked pretty bad as it was, but it was actually improved by the fact that Burson went positive which is a bit of a surprise because PR has been really, really soft.
So there'll be a lot of fun stuff for a friend of the pod, Tyler Turnbull, to have to deal with when you get started there as the new head of creative.
Alan, I mean, I guess you probably don't see a lot of WPP from a competitive perspective, but...
All right, well, first of all, we had WPP producing their third quarter results.
But that's still better than where they were, and they're kind of maintaining targets.
You know, one standout number for me was that North America, the gross revenue number was up a very significant amount.
What was it? 10.6%? While the net revenue was up negative one for organic, meaning there's an awful lot of pass-throughs, which one could infer was principle-based activity.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I thought that was kind of notable given how big that gulf was.
And I was also interested in the fact that Sydney Rose is very AI positive and speaking openly about hiring agents to reduce headcount and increase margin.
Yeah, it really does feel like, again, I'm relatively positive, I think, on the AI story for agencies at this point in time.
I mean, it's nothing new in a sense, but that creative line was actually, you know, it looked pretty bad as it was, but it was actually improved by the fact that Burson went positive which is a bit of a surprise because PR has been really, really soft.
So there'll be a lot of fun stuff for a friend of the pod, Tyler Turnbull, to have to deal with when you get started there as the new head of creative.
Alan, I mean, I guess you probably don't see a lot of WPP from a competitive perspective, but...
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