WPP and Google Cloud have expanded their strategic AI partnership with the launch of a frontier research initiative aimed at developing next-generation marketing, media and creative solutions. The move builds on the companies’ Cloud and AI collaboration announced in late 2025 and will embed advanced AI research into WPP’s creative and media workflows through its WPP Open platform.
The initiative will focus on applications spanning audience intelligence, content creation, campaign measurement, media optimisation, geospatial intelligence and agentic AI, combining expertise from Google Cloud, Google DeepMind and other Google teams with WPP’s marketing capabilities.
Among the first deployments is a generative media solution developed with Google DeepMind for Duracell’s global football campaign, enabling the iconic Duracell Bunny’s lip movements to be adapted across multiple languages while maintaining visual consistency. The collaboration has also produced AI-powered marketing intelligence tools and cultural intelligence capabilities designed to help brands better understand consumer behaviour and optimise campaign performance.
The companies said the expanded alliance reflects a broader shift towards AI-driven marketing, where research and experimentation are increasingly shaping creative production, audience planning and brand engagement. WPP added that the partnership is intended to combine frontier AI research with practical client applications to accelerate innovation across the marketing ecosystem.
Marco Montanaro, Marketing Director, Duracell, said: “At Duracell, we’re always looking for partners who share our appetite for pushing the boundaries of creativity. This collaboration with WPP and Google DeepMind delivered exactly that. It was a pioneering approach that allowed our Bunny to engage authentically across languages and markets during a major sporting moment. Innovation wasn’t just part of this project, it was the common thread from start to finish.”
Giuliana Coli, VP, Strategic Partnerships, WPP, said: “We believe the next phase of AI-driven creativity will be defined by by placing the human creative at the centre of the process. By collaborating with Google on frontier research to embed directly into our creative and media processes, we’re giving our people and our clients capabilities a distinct competitive advantage in the industry.”
Eleni Shaw, Principal Lead, Google DeepMind, said: “Working with WPP gives us something rare – The ability to see frontier research meet real creative challenges for our partners. That feedback loop between research and application is what accelerates both sides.”
