The Squad That We Are

With floor-to-ceiling glass windows that overlook the Thames and a bar that shows off the lights of London as they start to glisten in the night, VML UK’s new offices within WPP's Sea Containers-based headquarters are about as physically removed from a sweaty rugby field as it gets.

But strip away the polished exterior and the team has a lot in common with the New Zealand All Blacks: togetherness, obsession and gutsy drive.

That team ethos has inspired chief creative officer Ryan McManus to try to adopt within the agency, the fact that everyone from the captain to the most junior player scrubs and tidies after a game.

"Their culture was around character over talent," he explains. "That's unselected players and the senior players cleaned up the change room at the end of every game, which meant that no one was bigger than the jersey. Everyone was in it for the cause, not for the individual game. There's something in that."

At VML UK, the leadership team - including McManus, CEO Pip Hulbert, chief strategy officer Ben Worden and chief customer experience and data officer David Lloyd - has worked hard to cultivate a similarly collective ethos, where everyone has a sense of responsibility

In a clear display of the get-up-and-go entrepreneurial mindset at every level of VML, the day before our visit, CEO Pip Hulbert appeared as a guest judge on The Apprentice.

Alongside the likes of Dragons’ Den icon Levi Roots and business titan Baroness Karren Brady – from tanginess, to heat, and the practicality of the bottle design – Hulbert showed off her knack for zeroing in on the smallest imperfections.

Fresh from the excitement of The Apprentice, the four explain why the team is more cohesive and ambitious than ever – from uniting the troops to being all-in on their goal of being a tech-forward, creatively savvy and multi-purpose agency.

‘Activists aren’t half-hearted – they’re all in’

Following VML’s formation from VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson’s merger in October 2023, the team has viewed the move as an opportunity to develop an activist mindset across the team. As McManus puts it: “If someone has left something on the floor, go pick it up, go change it”.

But as any leader will attest, instilling a healthy and vibrant workplace culture takes time and consistent effort. Hulbert reflects: “It’s like everything isn’t it – when you ask people to do a different task in the morning, like go to a new coffee shop, it just takes getting used to. Now we’re over that”.

Balancing a merger with post-Covid working habits made aligning the team a tougher challenge. To mitigate the fact that people weren’t in the office five days a week, Hulbert explains that VML uses a mixture of what she calls "forced fun" – activities like speed dating and town halls. WPP has also recently introduced a scheme offering free lunches on Fridays to returning workers to encourage more in-office socialising.

“You need people to be talking about their personal lives with each other. You need people to get into conversations and situations because it’s just human nature to be inquisitive and have a connection,” she says. “Culture really only comes from people knowing each other and having an opportunity to work together”.

At the same time, driving efficiency has been a priority. The merger brought together a 30,000-strong team across 64 markets, uniting tech, data, B2B and brand growth capabilities under one roof.

And WPP’s £250m AI investment last year is proving to be more than a headline number – it has helped create an internal operating system with centralised client hubs and smarter workflows.

“When you start to talk about AI and what is possible it starts to turn into a different conversation,” says Hulbert. “There’s a real education piece and your head begins to hurt and you have to pause. It’s hard to fit that into a pitch – you have to really tune into your awareness of the client and how brave they are – not just around creative work but around technology.”

Lloyd adds: "Because it’s still maturing, we need to get people to almost catch up on the tool – what it is, what it isn’t, the problems it solves and where the best balance of human and technology is."

But despite the lofty ambitions, keeping creativity at the heart of these evolutions is a non-negotiable and everything has to have an impact: “Activists aren’t half-hearted – they’re all in. You’re on board so you’re going to do something,” McManus highlights.

Building the agency of the future

No efficiency improvement is carried out without also considering whether it allows people to do their jobs as effectively and passionately as ever. “When you walk around and see people who are obsessed that is always a good thing. You see the conviction that comes with that, they let it take up an unfair amount of their time,” Worden says.

Embracing AI has helped focus the planning team and develop more space for thinking. “It ultimately gives you greater freedom and opportunity to focus on things that create real value. It enables you to seek experimentation in different ways That’s the thing people can find again – as its allowed people to do more of what they love and get to where they need to be faster," Worden adds

McManus drives home the point: “It’s amazing. Lean into it and use it. Nothing works without the magic and it’s a tool to make the magic more magical.”

The team are further ahead with their plans to integrate WPP Open and the creative prowess the agency already has in its corridors than expected. As Hulbert puts it: “We’re already where we thought we’d be at the end of 2025”. 

‘We feel we’ve got everything we need’

However, challenges include client-side pressure to do everything more cost-effectively and efficiently. To add to this, the changing landscape means VML will have to be extra clear about who it targets.

“My personal view is that there will be smaller agencies which work with smaller brands but I think there’s this big grey area in the middle of businesses which can either go large or small,” explains Hulbert.

“We feel we’ve got everything we need but it’s maybe not quite there yet because we just need to go through this huge transformation around adoption,” she continues.

“What we’ve got allows us to be really human first but empowered by technology and the best set of tools,” McManus adds. “While it feels kind of shaky at the moment it’s going through a rebirth. It feels vulnerable like a snake shedding its skin”.

The team are daring and aim to be even bolder with clients so that they can showcase how their model adds to both efficiency and creativity: “The narrative from the top at clients like HSBC and Nestlé is that we need to invest more in fewer, bigger, better marketing initiatives, but the flip side of that is that we need to make sure we're absolutely set up to prove that it's going to work for them,” Worden highlights.

The tight-knit four are laser-focused on the mission ahead, and they’re hungry to perform.

 “I think we haven’t yet had an opportunity to be the squad that we are. So we have to get the right opportunity to show up together,” Hulbert highlights.

As the team looks ahead, they are clear that unity and ambition will be driving forces for their success.

Like the All Blacks they're not just set on winning – they are set on being a shining example of how to play the game well.