What is AI capable of if it's not just a tool, but a creative partner?

All kinds of functions that a marketing professional might need, all available on a single dashboard, just a click away. AI tools are pre-prompted, ready for tasks, and built-in agents also assist with the work. WPP's Hungarian member, VML Hungary, a huge international agency and media holding, presented WPP Open, whose operation we had the opportunity to see live at Agencies' Night.

The integrated, AI-based marketing operating system has been developed by WPP for several years, and now has 33,000 users, available to holding members and their partners. It incorporates the latest generative AI technologies (such as OpenAI GPT, Google Gemini, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, or Bria), but these can be used within WPP's secure, closed system, meaning data is protected. It assists professionals from strategy creation through concept development to execution, supporting data-driven decision-making.

Paradigm Shift

Tamás Balog, CEO of VML Hungary, stated during the system's presentation:

WPP Open is not just a platform, but a paradigm shift in advertising. We are proud to be the first to offer such a complex AI-based solution on the Hungarian market.

WPP has formed strategic partnerships with more than 30 leading technology companies – such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Snap, TikTok, NVIDIA, and Shutterstock – to provide joint product development and preferential access to the latest technological advancements, and to directly integrate products into WPP Open.

Modern marketing has become extremely complex due to the diversity of channels, data, and technologies. Professionals have to deal with enormous amounts of data, while the demand for personalized communication is constantly growing. The great advantage of the WPP Open system is that it makes these processes transparent. Among other things, it combines creative, media, content production, and data analysis functions, adding the holding's databases and best practices. It acts like a central brain for agencies, and is expected to set new standards in the industry and promote innovative processes in advertising.

Clients receive customized, unique AI models in exchange for the appropriate subscription package, and can work with their agency on a common interface. Here they can track project status, react immediately, and try out tools or creative solutions in sandboxes – secure, isolated test environments – without endangering live systems or data. Of course, everyone only sees their own data and can only access the functions they need.

The Creative Studio

The goal was to create an AI-driven operating system where both a WPP colleague and the client can safely use generative AIs.

Bálint Witzl

Client Lead

"Within Operations, for example, there's an option to summarize a ten-page press release. Of course, this can be done outside the system, but on the interface, most functions are pre-prompted, making it much simpler and faster. Here you can ask for presentation topics, it helps write an email, if we receive new documentation or a brief, we can ask what it thinks about it. These alone don't represent a breakthrough, but the interface is complemented by functions that previously would have required multiple platforms, or for which there was no specific solution for advertising professionals. For me, competitor analysis is what brings a fundamental change to our work, as it is incomparably faster and more cost-effective than our previous solutions. And the creation of buyer personas is also groundbreaking. The latter means that a complex buyer persona can be created for the target audience. This is a huge help for inspiration, because since 2008, when I started working in advertising, clients have been able to spend the least on research," explains the expert.

With this persona, you can then talk about what they think about something, and test ideas on them. In this case, we asked Anna. Anna is a career-oriented woman who follows a healthy lifestyle, lives in the downtown district, her approximate income is visible, as is her master's degree, her preferences, what she needs, and what challenges she faces. But interesting things also appear in her profile, such as who she might follow on Instagram. We pitch her the idea of a marshmallow-filled chocolate. On the one hand, she likes it, she loves chocolate, but she wants a healthier alternative, she's interested in its ingredients, where they come from, and ethical sourcing is also important to her.

Another persona is Gábor Szabó, who is 22 years old, lives in rural city, and is a university student. He reacts quite differently and is much more price-sensitive. Obviously, professionals handle these responses carefully, not taking every word at face value, but in the absence of research, this help is invaluable for brainstorming.

You can also learn from it

"The Idea Generation function is particularly useful, it provides a lot of inspiration, for example, it can significantly reduce the time of a four-hour brainstorming session," points out Bálint Witzl, while Panni Kiss, VML's public relations manager, also joins in.

"I often use it for learning and self-development: for example, I write a press release, then ask it to review it and give advice on how to make it better. It provides new perspectives for me, and the knowledge that it can provide a starting point, ideas, and advice for the material means a lot. This makes it easier to start tasks, knowing I have help, and it's definitely not embarrassing to ask it questions," adds Panni Kiss.

The expert also frequently uses the text variation function, allowing her to phrase things differently for magazines with different themes. Even if she doesn't necessarily utilize what the AI generates, she learns a lot from it. The Content Production functions also allow AI tools to create social media posts, headlines, various text variants, and blog posts from a given text. They can also generate video, speech in multiple languages, create podcasts, etc.

Bálint Witzl highlights the focus group function. The essence of this is that after uploading an idea, strategy, concept, or even a creative, it can be evaluated with various tools, even creating a SWOT analysis, or examining it with the aforementioned buyer personas.

Furthermore, generative AIs can be used directly, in a secure, data-protected environment.

Testing the Agents

Various built-in agents are available to users, and they can also create their own, for example, there is an email summary expert, and WPP Open's self-aware scientist. But Bálint Witzl also has a "market researcher," among others, which he created himself for a previous task.

"An interesting function is the chain of thought, which guides you through how a response is formed in the agent. This is especially useful when testing an agent. So if we don't just need it for brainstorming, but want it to be truly credible, for example, for a client, then we can effectively check it this way. In such cases, we work it hard and meticulously review the points it went through, how it forms the answer. If it makes a mistake, for example, we can get to the bottom of what it interpreted differently," explains Bálint Witzl.

Shared Workspace

Clients highlighted increased efficiency in their feedback, stating that the shared workstation saves a lot of time.

"If a client has an idea in the morning and generates it, I see it immediately and can pass it on to the creatives. They also see where we are, can immediately request changes, and these can be indicated much more clearly," says Bálint.

Eight personalized AI agents are available to clients, some of which can be market research experts, a persona that is very knowledgeable about a product group's market, and are trained with their own results and research data. Another part can be buyer personas, which can be used to review creatives and test concepts.

Not LLM, but LMM

One of WPP Open's most important developments is Open Intelligence, which is the industry's first Large Marketing Model (LMM). This works similarly to large language models (LLMs), but tailored for marketing. While LLMs process human language and images, LMM understands and predicts audience behavior and marketing performance.

It relies on highly diverse demographic, behavioral, market, and commercial data from a network of over 350 global partners, originating from more than 75 markets. It continuously learns from real-time data, but clients can also supplement it with their own data. It helps – in preparation for a cookie-less world – with cookie-free targeting and an alternative solution for campaign measurement.

All of this allows for a fundamental transformation of marketing processes, moving from reactive operations towards proactive, real-time optimization. The system is capable of real-time creative adaptation, meaning it modifies creative content based on incoming data or environmental changes.

For us, the system's greatest value seems to be that it makes AI orders of magnitude easier to manage. We have the feeling of when MS-DOS was replaced by Windows: a visually more understandable and definitely more user-friendly interface for the average person.

Source: MediaFuture.hu

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