It may already have one of the largest list of divisions in the industry, but ad agency holding group WPP has just launched another new agency.

But Choreograph is a little different. Launched at a time when brands around the world are trying to activate their own first-party data as a response to challenges facing digital ad identifiers, the new unit will focus on this new and emerging need.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Kirk McDonald, North America CEO of GroupM, which will house Choreograph, explains the rationale.

Dancing with three legs

McDonald says Choreograph has “three legs”:

  1. “We help our clients earn and manage the data that they have, and the access to that. We then help them turn that into ID, into a clear resolved identity.”
  2. “We enrich it and expand it for them. Layers of intelligence and insights are included in that.”
  3. “We actually help them activate that, where they want to activate it against media, through our operating systems and platforms.”

The company has more than 700 staff available to it, including data scientists, technologists, product developers and customer success representatives.

First-party journey

Choreograph, which was announced in late April, will combine resources from GroupM and Wunderman Thompson, said by WPP CEO Mark Read to be “another important step in our simplification strategy”.

McDonald will oversee Choreograph.

He explains: “All our clients are on different parts of that journey of figuring out how to harness their first-party data, and activate it and turn that data into a resolved identity in a way that they can use it.

(Choreograph) really captures some of the history and the heritage of our Wunderman Thompson data business, 40+ years of experience in that team of data scientists, engineers, and experts around data management, robust data management suites, particularly around identity resolution and enrichment.”

Choreograph will use data and technology platform WPP Open.

By Robert Andrews on    @robertandrews