WPP buys New Commercial Arts to merge with Ogilvy

WPP has bought four-years old London agency New Commercial Arts to merge into Ogilvy Group. Initially the agency will run as a separate brand with co-founder James Murphy, a former CEO of adam&eveDDB and an Ogilvy alumnus, as head of the group in the UK.

Fiona Gordon, who has led Ogilvy in the UK since 2021, has been promoted to Global CEO of Advertising at Ogilvy. In this Gordon will report to Ogilvy Global CEO Devika Bulchandani.

WPP CEO Mark Read says: “NCA is one of the UK’s most exciting new agencies with a great team, an impressive roster of clients and a track record of elevating beloved British brands. Its capabilities and client base make NCA highly complementary to Ogilvy; bringing together these two very successful agencies will drive growth both for our clients and our own UK business.”

New Ogilvy CEO Murphy says: “Ogilvy is rightly recognised as the world’s pre-eminent creative network, and to be joining with the remit to unlock our collective potential in the UK market is irresistible. For our team and our clients this will be a game-changer in what we can bring to their careers and their brands.

“Plugging into Ogilvy and WPP’s network will give us access to data and AI tools at scale through WPP Open and to a broad set of Ogilvy capabilities that were simply out of our reach as an independent – from influencer marketing, PR, CRM, commerce and service design to business transformation and brand innovation through Ogilvy Consulting.”

Price is undisclosed although likely to be substantial as NCA is highly profitable. Murphy and fellow NCA founder CSO David Golding (above, Murphy right) and their partners sold A&E to Omnicom for a reported £110m. Rival Uncommon Creative Studio sold a majority stake to Havas as part of a six-year earnout that could net £120m.

NCA’s clients include Sainsbury’s, Nationwide, MoneySuperMarket.com, Nando’s and Alzheimer’s Society. Unusually it recently lost out in a pitch for Tetley which went to Pablo. Ogilvy also works on Sainsbury’s and the two share work for Vodafone.

From the outset of NCA industry insiders speculated that an eventual merger with WPP was a done deal although this was denied by Murphy and co. WPP CEO Mark Read and NCA CSO Golding are close friends. Another major holding company offered to buy a stake in NCA even as it launched. Murphy and co.’s motivation, apart from the obvious financial attraction, is that it would be difficult for the agency to get much bigger with only UK-centric clients to aim at as it has most of the obvious bases (supermarket, bank, price comparison site) covered already. When DDB bought a controlling stake in adam&eve, famous for its John Lewis advertising, in 2012 it transformed the struggling network agency into a UK powerhouse, becoming briefly the biggest by billings and winning a sackful of awards at Cannes Lions and elsewhere.

Ogilvy in the UK has recovered some of its equilibrium recently after some bizarre changes following the departure of Annette King, now at Accenture Song via Publicis Groupe. But it has failed to match the performance of its US big brother, currently the leading light of WPP’s creative line-up. WPP’s Read will be hoping Murphy and co. (the other NCA founders are CCO Ian Heartfield, CX boss Rob Curran and head of art Nici Hofer) can work DDB-style magic on Ogilvy.