WPP's shares crashed 14% in a single day, wiping out nearly 19% of the company's value as the advertising giant issued its second profit warning of 2025. But watching this unfold from Singapore, where I've spent over a decade bridging Western clients with Asian production realities, the real story isn't about numbers.
It's about ignorance.
I don't think Western agencies fundamentally misunderstand Asian markets. They simply don't know how these markets operate because they've never been exposed to them. When clients first come to me, they're genuinely surprised by what they can actually get in Asia.
Take Malaysia. We've had countless clients amazed by the country's diversity in terms of landscapes, locations, and culture. You have this beautiful mix of Malay, Chinese, and Indian communities, plus Westerners, all living together and creating a blend of cultures, religions, and traditions that's hard to rival anywhere else in the world.
This cultural richness represents a massive competitive advantage that Western agencies are completely missing. While Asia-Pacific's advertising market is projected to grow 5.71% through 2029, reaching $479.50 billion, agencies like WPP are hemorrhaging major clients like Coca-Cola and Mars.
The Coffee Meeting Crisis
The real problem goes deeper than cultural blindness. Agencies have become so budget-obsessed they've forgotten how to build relationships.
Everyone's looking at safe bets, trying not to push the envelope too far to avoid alienating anyone. Competition is fierce. There's pressure from multiple channels that need advertising content, from TikTok to YouTube to Instagram and Facebook. Brands are completely exposed across all these platforms.
But thinking purely about budget-driven campaigns is exactly what's costing these agencies their clients. Clients want to be wooed. They want to be entertained.
I recently had a conversation with a producer who was lamenting the good old times when agencies would still spend money to entertain. Nowadays, it's hard to get even a meeting for coffee with an agency producer.
That tells you everything about where the industry is. If people don't even have the chance or time to meet in person for a quick chat, the system is broken.
The Months and Years Approach
We've nurtured some of the people we work with nowadays for months and years. Just being there, checking in on them, making sure they're okay, inviting them out for coffee, simply being present.
It has paid off. Eventually these people come to us and work with us. Not because they're looking for the cheapest deal, but because they know they're going to get value from the way we've cherished the relationship over the previous months or years.
This is what the industry needs to return to. A relationship-based approach that isn't about driving the budget down as much as possible, but building something where everybody can win.
The contrast couldn't be starker. While WPP announced a 3.5% workforce reduction and expects revenue to fall by 3-5% in 2025, we're expanding into new markets across Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.
Swimming in the Same Pool
We're all swimming in the same pool. We all want to make great work. We all want to impress everyone with our creative ingenuity. We want to deliver outstanding work and tell good stories. It doesn't matter what size company you are.
What matters is the philosophy and ethos you carry.
The difference is that we're small, agile, and relationship-focused while others are working on saving their profit margins. Yes, we have to look at profitability too. But we're more nimble in the way we operate.
Because we don't carry massive overhead, we can execute small productions on lean budgets. We also know how to run productions with three, five, or ten crew members just as well as productions requiring 30, 40, 50, or even 200-person crews.
This enables us to say yes to smaller projects that larger production houses or agencies would reject. We can help and support across the board, not just on huge productions.
The Project-by-Project Solution
Our secret to avoiding the bloat that's killing giants like WPP is simple: we hire on a project-by-project basis.
We don't have all the people in-house to do a 50-person shoot. What I'm saying is that we can deliver shoots on any scale, whereas small-scale shoots aren't justifiable for larger agencies because they need bigger jobs to ensure their margins are large enough.
This flexibility matters more than ever. In an increasingly fragmented media landscape where brands need to connect authentically across diverse Asian markets, this operational flexibility becomes a competitive advantage.
Meanwhile, agencies that understand local nuances and can adapt quickly are thriving.
The Future Belongs to Nimble
WPP's crisis reveals something fundamental about the advertising industry's future. The giants built their empires on overhead and bureaucracy that made sense in a different era.
Today's market rewards agility, cultural fluency, and genuine relationships over corporate machinery and profit margin optimization.
The agencies that survive will be those that remember why clients matter more than spreadsheets. They'll be the ones willing to have coffee meetings, nurture relationships for months or years, and say yes to projects that don't fit traditional profit models.
We're all swimming in the same pool. But some of us remember how to stay afloat by helping others do the same.