Ad giant WPP is opening a new office in Atlanta that will be responsible for supporting some of its most important clients, notably Coca-Cola. 

WPP is the world’s largest ad agency as of 2021. It operates a network of advertising firms, PR shops and market research companies that together employ about 109,000 people worldwide. 

WPP’s new Atlanta campus will be located on the site of Fourth Ward Offices, a mixed use development set to open next year. The development features multiple office towers, a hotel, residential properties and retail spaces.

“We are thrilled to provide a new Campus for our agencies in the Atlanta community, especially in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood which is experiencing unprecedented growth and transformation,” commented Michael Houston, the head of WPP’s US business. “Between the interface with the BeltLine and the surrounding amenities, the Atlanta Campus fosters the type of creative environment that will inspire our people, clients and partners alike.”

The staffers at WPP’s Atlanta campus will have multiple responsibilities. Most notably, they will support the marketing work that the ad giant does for Coca-Cola, which has its headquarters in Atlanta. 

Last November, Coca-Cola named WPP as its global marketing network partner. That means WPP is responsible for managing most of the company’s worldwide marketing budget, which is worth about $4 billion annually. 

WPP didn’t take  its landmark contract win lightly. It established a new business unit, OpenX, for the specific purpose of supporting Coca-Cola’s marketing operations.

The OpenX unit includes employees from multiple WPP subsidiaries. The idea is to assign each aspect of Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy to the WPP subsidiary best equipped to handle it.  

The ad giant’s new Atlanta campus is set to become one of the primary work hubs for OpenX. Some 400 employees from 10 different WPP subsidiaries are expected to move into the office.

The subsidiaries that will have a presence in Atlanta include some of the ad giant’s most important business units. Among them is Wunderman Thompson, a New York-headquartered ad agency owned by WPP that employs about 20,000 people worldwide, or nearly a fifth of its parent company’s workforce.

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