WPP opens London hub in bid to produce faster, AI-assisted ads

By Paul Sandle

LONDON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - WPP opened a production facility in London on Wednesday which the British company said was the first of a global roll-out to meet demand for high-quality ads that can be deployed across social media and other platforms at speed.

Cindy Rose, WPP's CEO for the past year, brought together its production capabilities in WPP Production, one of four operating units, early in 2026 as part of her turnaround plan.

WPP's clients, who 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 AI chatbots and other services, she said.

The 34,000-square-foot 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. 

"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 as well." 

The hub brings AI-powered production, such as putting 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 last month sending its shares up 29% 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," she 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.  

(Reporting by Paul Sandle; Editing by Alexander Smith)