“WPP agencies build iconic brands that are meaningful in culture. It’s important for us to have Partners that understand our vision and know how to work with our agencies and our clients to deliver against that,” says WPP’s Nilufar Fowler.

“It’s very easy for people to get caught up in a technology narrative, when really the narrative is around how technology enables the creativity that drives our work for our clients”, says Fowler.  

 The new global partnership with Contentful demonstrates just how partnerships can both empower creativity and deliver bold, transformative experiences at scale.

The partnership – agile content capability 

The strategic partnership offers agile content capability solutions to help WPP clients drive growth and maximise content-driven experiences. It will give WPP priority access to new product releases as well as provide targeted investment into joint product development and innovation with a focus on inclusive and accessible design.

The partnership brings together WPP’s existing Contentful partners – AKQA, Code, Hogarth, Ogilvy, Scholz & Friends Family, VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson – under a combined global scaled capability that will develop innovative, personalised composable experiences for brands.  

This initiative demonstrates WPP’s continued investment in MACH and composable capabilities. It also follows the announcements of WPP’s agencies Wunderman Thompson and AKQA joining the MACH Alliance, of which Contentful is a founding member.

The MACH movement is a global community of people, partners and brands who are exploring new alternatives and approaches to tech-enabled, commerce, CX, data, content, and innovation. 

Fowler says: “There has been an acceleration in the social awareness of consumers and with this, a new set of demands placed on brands. For our clients, the need for fast time to market through accessible, composable, and agile capabilities, has never been greater.” This partnership agreement will help WPP agencies meet that need.  

What is the power of Contentful? 

The Contentful Composable Content Platform brings the building blocks of content together to create content once but with the capability of reusing that content for any digital experience. The API-first platform integrates easily with data sources and new functionality as digital experiences and technology evolve. It is a platform that turbocharges storytelling. 

It also frees teams to work together to connect, create and extend content more efficiently. This means building faster and delivering at scale.

Adoption has been high. Nearly 30% of the Fortune 500 and thousands of companies around the world rely on Contentful to help them bring their best ideas to life. 

Accessibility and inclusion are key.

Underpinning the partnership is a shared ambition for WPP and Contentful to invest in accessible and inclusive experiences and design. As a part of this commitment, WPP will join specialist product and partner councils at Contentful to shape product development and receive early access to alpha and beta platforms.

Contentful will also provide WPP with tools and expertise to enhance WPP’s existing offerings – such as Brand Guardian from WPP’s Wunderman Thompson. Brand Guardian is a powerful accessibility tool that leverages AI to enable inclusive, consistent content and experiences for brands. 

Wunderman Thompson has focused heavily on building and scaling accessible inclusive digital experiences. The agency maintains that accessible experiences are simply better experiences; and it says that accessibility done right is so seamlessly integrated into the creative process that it becomes unnoticeable, intuitive, and simply part of the work. 

With a global population of people living with a disability reaching 1bn, the commercial opportunity for brands who get accessibility and inclusivity right is estimated at a vast $13tr.

But Wunderman Thompson points out that around three-quarters of people living with a disability report that the customer experience is failing. It is precisely those kinds of numbers that make the implementation of accessible authoring tools so compelling.  

But as Fowler says, no one organisation can achieve all this alone. “Storytelling requires partners,” she says. And accessibility and inclusivity are best achieved across teams with combined knowledge and experience. 

“The partnership between Contentful and WPP enables us to deliver the best outcomes possible for every one of our customers, and I'm thrilled to see the benefits of our composable content platform come to life with the expertise of the outstanding agencies within the WPP network” – Steve Sloan, Chief Executive Officer, Contentful.