WPP takes Coca-Cola’s international media account after Publicis walks away
WPP is taking Coca-Cola's international media, data and technology account after Publicis pulled out of the pitch two rounds in.
Photo: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels (Pexels License)
WPP is taking Coca-Cola’s international media, data and technology account. Publicis left the pitch on 2 September 2026, after two of the three planned rounds. The group had just won PepsiCo’s global media business, worth 1.7 billion dollars. Mediasense ran the Coca-Cola review.
The account covers everything outside North America, Japan and Korea
Coca-Cola splits its media buying by region. The business WPP is taking covers international markets. North America sits outside it. Japan and Korea are handled by Dentsu. Coca-Cola spends between 2.5 and 2.6 billion dollars on media worldwide, so the international share is the larger part of it.
Pitches ran in London and Shanghai before Mexico City was dropped
The review had three rounds planned. Agencies presented in London in late August 2026, with Arthur Sadoun of Publicis and Cindy Rose of WPP each in the room. Shanghai followed the next week. The Mexico City round never happened, because Publicis withdrew first. PepsiCo had moved its global media to Publicis without a competitive pitch.
North America is a separate review worth about 800 million dollars
Coca-Cola’s North American media is still being decided. Publicis took that business from WPP in February 2025, and Coca-Cola then put it back into review. Omnicom and Dentsu are competing for it. WPP is not. The North American spend is around 800 million dollars.
WPP had a 4.7% fall in net sales to answer for
The win lands in a hard year for WPP. Like-for-like net sales fell 4.7% in the first half of 2026. The group has been cutting up to a thousand more jobs. Cindy Rose is one year into running the company. Keeping Coca-Cola, a client WPP has worked with since 2021, is the kind of result a turnaround story needs.
The scoreboard after three weeks is easy to read. Publicis gains PepsiCo and keeps a live shot at Coca-Cola in North America. WPP keeps the larger international half of Coca-Cola and stops a run of losses. Omnicom loses PepsiCo, which its finance chief called “a disappointment”, and is now fighting Dentsu for the North American piece. Dentsu keeps Japan and Korea either way.