In advertising, when a multinational brand rolls out a campaign across 30+ countries, producing just one video won’t cut it. Multiple versions are needed, sometimes dozens, even hundreds.

Each version might need a new language, different product shots, fresh messaging, or even a format change. Either way, the main creative has to multiply and adapt fast, without losing its quality. This is where WPP Productions' automated production platform Open Production comes in.

Traditionally, this kind of workload would mean late nights, endless file versions, and a lot of manual work. At WPP Production, that is now a regular task thanks to Open Production.

Founded in London more than 15 years ago, WPP Production has grown into a global team of over 7,000 people, working on Global brands producing ads at scale while maintaining the creative quality expected of WPP. While WPP Production had already invested in building their automation platform, WPP Open Production, one key part of their workflow still wasn’t covered, and it involved automated video versioning. To close that gap, they needed something more.

That’s where Plainly Videos came in.

The goals of the client

The goal for WPP Production was clear: bring After Effects into WPP Open Production to enable large-scale video versioning. Their teams had already built a platform that could handle images, banners, and HTML5 videos with ease - a solid foundation for scaling content. But leaving After Effects out of that system meant one of the most important formats still sat outside the flow.

Since so much of their creative output relies on AE, this gap was too big to ignore. WPP Production needed WPP Open Production to support After Effects templates so their entire production pipeline could run as one seamless, scalable process.

Challenges they faced

Now, bringing After Effects into WPP Open Production. sounded simple enough in theory, but the reality was more complex. Unlike other creative tools, After Effects doesn’t come with an API or a lot of built-in automation features. That meant WPP Production couldn’t just plug it in to their existing system.

They even considered building their own API for After Effects, but the investment in terms of time and resources would have been massive. So they turned to off-the-shelf solutions, and

even a few open-source projects, but none of them met the technical standards WPP Production required for reliability, security, and scale.

The challenge, then, was clear: find a way to automate After Effects that was powerful enough to integrate seamlessly into WPP Open Production, without compromising the enterprise-level demands of their clients.

The solution

After weighing their options, WPP Production chose Plainly. What made it the most logical choice was the design: Plainly is an API-first platform built specifically to support After Effects. Instead of trying to build their own API from scratch or compromise with a tool that couldn’t handle their scale, WPP Production could just plug Plainly directly into WPP Open Production.

Plainly’s API also offered something else that was critical for them: full integration capabilities. From setting up templates to rendering final videos, everything could be handled inside WPP Open Production, while still giving WPP Production’s teams the complete functionality of Plainly’s platform.

It wasn’t just a temporary solution or a quick fix - it was a natural extension of what they had already built. For WPP Production, it was the missing piece that turned WPP Open Production. into a truly end-to-end solution for scaling creative production.

Implementation

However, integrating Plainly into WPP Open Production wasn’t an easy, overnight switch. WPP Production and Plainly worked closely over several months through a proof-of-concept phase, with extensive testing to make sure the integration worked perfectly.

WPP Production wasn’t just interested in functionality, but also in trust. Any new technology had to meet strict enterprise-level requirements around security and compliance before it could be rolled out across their workflows. Together, the teams validated the system step by step until it was ready to go live.

By the end of the process, Plainly felt less like an add-on and more like a built-in part of WPP Open Production.

The results

Fast forward, some time has passed, and Plainly has now fully been integrated into WPP Open Production for over a year, and it’s been running smoothly ever since. What was once a gap in WPP Production’s workflow is now an automated, scalable process that supports one of their most important creative formats - video. And when we say video, we mean video for all channels, from social to OLV to cTV.

Now that After Effects is finally a part of the pipeline, WPP Production’s teams can focus more on creativity while WPP Open Production. takes care of the repetitive, manual production work. The result is faster turnaround, consistent quality, and the ability to deliver campaigns at scale without adding extra strain on the team.

So, if your team is also looking for a way to automate video production at scale, Plainly can help. Book a demo today and see how it can fit in and smooth out your workflows, too.