WPP and Adobe Expand AI Partnership to Rewire Marketing Operations
WPP and Adobe have deepened their partnership to build an AI-driven system that connects planning, creative, production, and media into one coordinated workflow. The goal is simple: reduce fragmentation, scale personalization, and cut delays that slow growth.
For operations leaders, this is about moving from a stack of disconnected tools to a single, governed content supply chain. Think fewer handoffs, cleaner data, faster approvals, and better control across the full lifecycle.
Why current marketing ops break down
- Teams work in silos, so plans, assets, media, and optimization don't sync. That adds rework, versioning issues, and slow turnarounds.
- Content demand keeps rising across channels and segments, but brand consistency and asset governance lag behind.
- Customer data sits in separate platforms, which weakens segmentation and leads to repetitive or irrelevant messaging.
What the unified system includes
- End-to-end orchestration: One workflow linking planning, creation, production, activation, and optimization.
- AI for content and media: Generative models trained on a brand's approved IP via Adobe Firefly Foundry and WPP Open agents for media adaptation and activation. Learn more about Adobe Firefly and WPP Open.
- Embedded guardrails: Brand standards, usage rights, and compliance checks baked into the workflow to reduce legal and reputational risk.
- Privacy-safe by design: Models trained on cleared data, with controls to lower the risk of copyright issues, misuse, and data leakage.
What changes for operations
- Single source of truth: Assets, versions, rights, and approvals live in one place, not across five tools and email threads.
- Fewer manual touches: AI handles repetitive work (resizing, variant creation, copy adaptation) while keeping brand rules intact.
- Faster time-to-market: Less queue time and fewer handoffs mean more relevant content in market, sooner.
- Clear governance: Built-in policies, audits, and lineage make compliance easier without slowing teams down.
Leaders weigh in
Stephan Pretorius, CTO at WPP: "For years, we've watched brilliant creative ideas get stuck in production queues, buried under versioning and approvals and media plans. That era is over."
"With Adobe, we're shattering the barriers between ideation and impact, building agentic content systems that handle the complexity so human creativity can soar."
Anil Chakravarthy, President, Customer Experience Orchestration Business at Adobe: "Marketing and creative teams today understand the high bar consumers have set for personalization... Bringing together capabilities across Adobe and WPP provides a seamless way for brands to address this challenge, activating AI agents to drive customer experience orchestration and unlock personalization at scale."
90-day implementation plan
- Map your content supply chain: From brief to activation. Identify handoffs, duplicate checks, and approval bottlenecks.
- Define a source of truth: Pick where assets, rights, brand rules, and performance data will live and be governed.
- Select 2-3 priority journeys: For example, onboarding, reactivation, or seasonal campaigns. Limit scope to learn fast.
- Assemble your brand dataset: Approved assets, tone rules, legal constraints, and usage rights for model training.
- Automate approvals: Turn policy into workflow steps with clear owners, SLAs, and exception paths.
- Connect activation: Wire the system to your media platforms and CDP so content, audiences, and spend align.
- Stand up an ops pod: Marketing ops, creative ops, data, and legal with weekly metrics reviews and clear change control.
Metrics that matter
- Cycle time: Brief-to-publish and revision-to-approve.
- Reuse rate: Percent of assets adapted vs. net-new.
- Approval touches: Average rounds and time per round.
- On-brand compliance: Violations per 100 assets.
- Personalization reach: Share of impressions with segment-specific variants.
- Signal responsiveness: Time from audience signal to message or creative change.
- Media efficiency: ROAS or CPA for personalized vs. generic variants.
Risk, privacy, and governance
- IP safety: Use approved datasets and rights metadata; audit model training sources.
- Data minimization: Limit PII exposure and apply role-based access to assets and prompts.
- Traceability: Keep lineage for who created, edited, approved, and activated each asset.
- Model controls: Define usage policies, prompts allowed, and red lines for restricted content.
Operating model impact
This partnership isn't a new tool; it's a new way to run marketing. Planning, content, and media move together, guided by AI agents and enforced by workflow rules. The result is fewer silos, faster iteration, and experiences that stay on-brand at scale.
WPP and Adobe are also launching a joint Transformation Practice to help teams redesign their operating model and roll out governance, training, and measurement. For ops leaders, this is the moment to standardize the content supply chain and retire the patchwork.
Go deeper
For practical training on scaling AI across planning-to-activation, see the AI Learning Path for Marketing Managers.
Your membership also unlocks:
