WPP Digital is establishing Deliver, a global digital production capability that will distribute work among the holding company's stable of digital agencies. Neal Prescott has been appointed as the new unit's CEO. A company release states that, "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 will act as the exchange through which all of WPP's agencies will be able to gain access to the company's production that comes from specialization as well as to the cost savings in digital production inherent to scale.
While a majority of its business is currently offshore work, Deliver will give WPP's digital agencies access to a broader range of clients and agencies inside WPP. Among the roster of agencies that will be involved with Deliver include Quasar from India besides 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), 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, CEO, WPP Digital. "Neal is charged with improving our digital services offering and making it more coherent and cost effective across the group. By choosing to utilize Deliver, our agencies will be able to offer clients the best way to do the best work online at the best possible cost."
"Deliver is a great opportunity because it is not emerging from a standing start," said Prescott, adding, "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."
"These are just a few examples of the talent pool and resources that WPP has amassed," added Prescott. "My job will be to act as the conduit through which the global demands of WPP's agencies are matched with the people who can execute the work in a seamless and economic fashion."
