Why marketing needs to think differently about production

Why marketing needs to think differently about production

Why marketing needs to think differently about production

For years, and for as long as I have worked in this business, the industry attached a lazy label to what production is. They called it "non-working media". 

I have always resented that phrase. 

The idea that production is merely a passive cost centre, a transactional line item required to translate someone else's idea into deliverable assets, is hopelessly obsolete. In today’s market, clinging to that view means completely misunderstanding how modern brand growth is generated. 

The digital landscape has fundamentally reshaped consumer journeys. Audiences no longer move in straight lines; they navigate an intricate, fragmented web of channels and platforms, demanding continuous, culturally authentic relevance at every turn. Every marketing leader I speak with faces a version of the exact same challenge: how to generate an unprecedented volume of dynamic content, tailored for hyper-segmented audiences, without compromising visual standards, diluting brand equity, or stretching budgets to breaking point. 

Under the traditional agency production model, that felt like an impossible mathematical equation. But technology and modern production techniques have broken that trade-off once and for all. 

Effectiveness data consistently demonstrates that between 55% and 60% of addressable media effectiveness is driven directly by the quality, relevance and speed of the creative content being served. The finest, most targeted media buy in the world will fail if the creative asset falling through it fails to resonate. If media effectiveness lives and dies by the quality of the content that fuels it, production cannot sensibly be termed "non-working". 

Production has moved decisively from a procurement-led conversation about cost to a boardroom conversation about growth. Making is no longer an isolated execution discipline; it is an active driver of audience response and commercial return. 

The blueprint: where craft meets advanced technology 

To capitalise on this reality, production models must fundamentally transform. Traditional, siloed ways of working were simply not built for the demands of always-on marketing. What brands need today is a connected production platform that unifies talent, technology, data, and craft. 

Across WPP Production, we have brought together nearly 10,000 extraordinary craft specialists – across 40 global markets – under one umbrella. Our objective is clear: to build the world’s most advanced, craft-driven content production powerhouse. 

Against this backdrop, AI is not a threat to creativity but rather a catalyst. 

AI effectively removes historic capacity constraints, meaning content volume is now virtually unlimited. But technology on its own only solves a volume problem – and volume without craft simply accelerates a dull "sea of sameness". 

Our strategy is not technology for technology’s sake; it is about empowering human craft. Technology allows us to automate the ordinary so that our world-class directors, animators, editors and VFX artists can focus on the extraordinary. We are seeing our people evolve into hybrid creators – talent who blend deep craft expertise with a mastery of real-time engines, AI pipelines and generative workflows. That human nuance, emotional connection and taste is what gives a brand its true competitive edge. 

When you connect that talent to an agentic platform like WPP Open, production turns into an agile, highly responsive ecosystem. Rather than waiting at the end of a linear process, production becomes a continuous intelligence loop. Real-time media signals directly inform what content is made, for which audience, in which channel and at what precise moment. 

We are moving away from static 30-second spots toward dynamic, living storytelling systems. Using digital product twins, AI-enabled creative environments and virtual pipelines, we can take a single original idea and adapt, scale and localise it across dozens of markets effortlessly keeping every iteration authentic and platform-native. 

We are backing this belief with serious physical investment. Facilities like Devon’s Point, our new 34,000 sq ft flagship studio in East London, are the physical expression of this ambition. By housing one of the UK’s largest virtual production stages, modular studios, creator hubs, and post-production under one roof, we eliminate the need for expensive, carbon-intensive overseas shoots. On our virtual stage, we can place a brand anywhere in the world in a single afternoon – keeping the budget right where it belongs: in the craft and origination of the work itself. 

From production efficiency to business performance 

The real opportunity here extends far beyond production efficiencies. 

The traditional model was strictly sequential: write the strategy, devise the campaign, make the assets, hand them over to media and measure the result months later. In an always-on world, that linear assembly line is woefully inadequate. 

Today, the line between physical, virtual, and synthetic production is blurring. By placing production right at the intersection of creative, media and technology, it becomes the coalescing force of modern marketing. When what performs well in media instantly informs what gets produced next, spend ceases to be a cost line item going out of the business and instead becomes a quantifiable investment in performance, media efficiency and brand equity. 

For far too long, production sat at the end of the creative food chain. It is time to look at it from the opposite direction. 

When the volume and quality of creative content dictate how effectively media performs, production becomes a primary engine of business growth. That is the fundamental leap from "non-working media" to an engine of performance – from asking how efficiently content can be made to proving how powerfully it works. 

For those of us dedicated to the art and business of making, there has never been a more exciting time to lead the way.