So it isn’t going to be WPP Creative – or not yet anyway – but WPP Production. In effect a build-out of WPP’s existing and successful production business Hogarth into what it hopes will be an AI-driven future. Hogarth CEO Richard Glasson will be in charge.
WPP Production will, the company says, be a “new global powerhouse fusing WPP’s collective production expertise with advanced Gen AI, unparalleled creativity and multi-year investments in a new studio network, unleashing high-velocity content and cinematic-quality storytelling designed for the future of business and to drive client growth.”
CEO Glasson says: “This is a transformative moment for us and, more importantly, for our clients. Bringing all of WPP’s craft expertise together in WPP Production reinforces our position at the heart of WPP’s integrated offering. It allows us to activate the full collective power of WPP – its talent, creativity, technology and data – to redefine content creation. We are focused on delivering smarter, more innovative and world-class storytelling that drives business for our clients.”
WPP global CEO Cindy Rose says: “The launch of WPP Production is a cornerstone of our strategic vision to integrate our services, making it easier for clients to access WPP’s full spectrum of capabilities. In a rapidly evolving landscape where content is king, WPP Production will be the powerhouse that enables us to be the trusted growth partner for our clients. This is about delivering exceptional value and setting new benchmarks for the quality and scale of content production worldwide.”
Whether or not this is the over-arching new strategy Rose has been promising we wait to see. Common to all of WPP’s recent pronouncements has been AI (obvs.) and positioning the company as a platform, a kind of all-purpose digital department store for all things client-related. Selling software essentially. How this will affect WPP’s 100,000 or so employees we’ll have to wait and see.
