WPP spreads its wings to boost AI capabilities
WPP has a big operation in India – 11,000 or so people it seems – and, like the rest of the world, is turning to the emerging economic superpower. In WPP’s current case, to boost its AI capabilities.
CEO Mark Read has stated that her sees AI as a big lever for growth – and opposed to just another way of cutting costs – and WPP’s chief AI officer (another new one) Daniel Hulme has said that he’s looking to sign up more “talent and capabilities.”
Hulme is also the CEO of Satalia, an AI tech specialist, which WPP bought in 2021.
Speaking in India, Hulme says that these acquisitions are designed to enhance WPP’s problem-solving capabilities throughout its supply chain, including content creation, production, and distribution. Different types of AI are required for each stage. Output includes text, sound, images and, shortly, video content. He thinks it will allow people to concentrate on being creative although some pundits see major job losses as as an inevitable corollary of AI.
WPP might be said to be a company searching for a strategy as its philosophy under founder and former CEO Sir Martin Sorrell was to be the biggest and therefore the home for the world’s biggest clients. The biggest threat to Sorrell’s plan used to be a merger among rivals but the mooted deal between Publicis Groupe and Omnicom fell apart a decade or more ago.
Ad holding companies have been replaced by the tech giants across large parts of the marcom map so they all need a new strategy. WPP, which already has a deal with developer Nvidia, seems to have settled on AI.