WPP Digital, the digital investment and operating arm of ad giant WPP Group, announced the launch of Deliver, a global digital production capability that distributes work among the group’s stable of digital agencies in markets outside North America and Western Europe. The company says Deliver will ensure that clients get the best solutions at the best price.
Neal Prescott, most recently was Executive Vice President and Global Head of Technology Enablement at Publicis-owned Digitas, has been named CEO of the venture.
Deliver will leverage WPP’s existing production capabilities in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and South Africa in a “distributed model” that uses the scale of WPP’s digital production to not only provide cost-effective digital production, but also channel assignments to the best qualified resources within WPP. Deliver is the exchange through which all of WPP’s agencies can gain access to the high-quality production that comes from specialization as well as to the cost savings in digital production inherent to scale.
Presently, WPP has over 700 professionals working in the area of digital production in these markets. While much of their business is currently offshore work, Deliver will give them access to a broader range of clients and agencies inside WPP. The agencies involved with Deliver include Actis Systems (Russia), AGENDA (China), Aqua (South Africa), Studiocom (via its Offshore Guys subsidiary in Colombia) and ZAAZ (Seattle) from the Wunderman network, as well as The Ogilvy Group and WPP Digital agencies BLUE (China/Singapore), Quasar (India) and Schematic (Los Angeles/Costa Rica).
“With digital work accounting for more of our business and with large global clients openly embracing digital solutions, WPP has amassed arguably the most robust talent pool, resources and technologies in the digital marketing space,” said Mark Read, Chief Executive Officer of WPP Digital.
“Deliver is a great opportunity because it is not emerging from a standing start,” said Prescott. “The agencies that will contribute their expertise are already outsourcing work for their own clients to more economical production facilities in Costa Rica or Eastern Europe. For example, Schematic maintains a large staff in Costa Rica. Studiocom does the same in Colombia via its Offshore Guys subsidiary. BLUE produces online work for American and European clients in its facilities in Singapore. Aqua has similar capabilities in South Africa,” he added.
