Advertising giant WPP opens London hub to produce faster, AI-assisted ads
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The hub brings AI-powered production, modular studio environments and post-production capabilities under one roof.
PHOTO: AFP
LONDON – WPP opened a production facility in London on Sept 23, which the British company said was the first in a global roll-out to meet demand for high-quality ads that can be deployed across social media and other platforms quickly.
Cindy Rose, the advertising giant’s chief executive for the past year, brought together the company’s production capabilities under WPP Production, one of four operating units, early in 2026 as part of her turnaround plan.
WPP’s clients, which include Coca-Cola, Unilever and Ford, needed to influence consumers through hyper-local, community-led engagement at scale, while also impacting algorithms so they could be discovered by artificial intelligence chatbots and other services, she said.
The 34,000 sq ft Devon’s Point hub in East London would help address this need, Rose said, with rapid shooting and editing facilities, advanced AI production and creator collaboration spaces.4,
“It’s about winning new business, because a lot of the pitches that we respond to these days are integrated mandates across creative, production, media, and, increasingly, enterprise solutions,” she told Reuters.
“It’s also about expanding our footprint across the addressable spend of our existing clients.”
The hub brings AI-powered production, such as placing a real Ford Capri into a virtual Paris street, modular studio environments and post-production capabilities under one roof.
Rose’s turnaround is making progress, with better-than-expected results and confirmation of WPP’s guidance in August sending its shares up 29 per cent on the day.
“It’s very important to me that my team is seen as a team that delivers what we say we are going to deliver,” Rose said, adding: “And, so far, that’s exactly what we are doing.”
WPP had identified “quite a number” of assets that were not core to its integrated client proposition, she said.
“These might not be complete disposals, they could be partial disposals, there might be partnership models, but we are actively looking at the long tail of assets that we have in order to clean up our balance sheet and generate capacity to invest in our growth engines,” Rose added. REUTERS