Havas Is Launching a Worldwide Creative Production Studio

It’s been over five years in the making for Paul Ward as he takes on his new role as global chief executive of Havas Studios, a new production service from the advertising holding company formed in partnership with creative production agency Wellcom Worldwide. But the year-long pandemic has sharpened his view even more on the need for rethinking strategy. Ward, who was previously the group chief operations officer for the U.K. arm of Havas Group, will lead the division, something he and Chris Hirst, Havas Creative’s global chief executive, have been talking about since they joined the business in 2015. Havas Studios will offer services such as film, audio, print, photographic and digital content production, as well as post-production facilities as clients no longer wish to spend a great deal of money on production. “They want to be able to create this huge set of different highly leveraged images, or films or clips, and start to use them all over the world,” Ward said about the key focus for the offer. “It's being able to be premium content originators, and work with our creative department in order to do that.” Wellcom Worldwide was acquired by Innocean in 2019. Headquartered in Australia, it specializes in digital marketing, content production and marketing operations technology. What Havas Studios will offer The short-term aim is to see the creation of 12 integrated digital production studios across 10 markets by next year, offering a full range of production capabilities. Already, there are content studios established in London, New York, Chicago and Kuala Lumpur. To follow will be further studios across Europe, Australia, China, India, LATAM and the West Coast of the U.S. The Studios will make use of Wellcom’s technology suite, with its Kuala Lumpur studios seen as a “low-cost” base from which to produce content, although specialist studios will be created within key Havas Village locations internationally. Headquartered in London, the business will be supported by an executive committee composed of executives from both partner businesses. While Studios will be available for creative teams to work with across Havas, it will not be mandatory to them and so it will need to compete with other production houses to offer the talent those teams feel will realize their work best, Ward said. It will also pitch for new clients to work with externally, rather than relying on clients already working with Havas. In another recent trend, more thought is going into how to better leverage platforms creatively to make the most of costs, but also to make the most of each platform’s individual offer, Ward said. What we're going to try and do is create a business that gives the creatives and the clients everything they need.Paul Ward, global chief executive of Havas Studios “It's not just a case of taking one film or one image and chopping it 1,000 different ways," he said. "Now you've got to look at how does something work on TikTok. How do you leverage TikTok? How does this work on Facebook? How does this work online? How does this work in detail? And if you have to spend time thinking about it, you can't just shunt it on.” Ward says the biggest challenge he faces in building the business is the growing use of technology, automation and personalization while also understanding it. “That's the thing that keeps me awake at night, not because I think it's going to take over the world," he said. "It's an area that when that global business cracks content, automation and personalization at scale, and does it in a highly creative way, that's when we’ve made it and that's what I want because there's a huge opportunity.” Working with clients Ward said creatives strive to make "fantastic" and "brilliant" work with the highest production values, but clients no longer want to spend lavishly on budgets. "Clients want to control the budget, which is right," he said. "So what we're going to try and do is create a business that gives the creatives and the clients everything they need. And that's going to be quite a challenge.” Having been building this proposition for the last six to nine months, Ward reveals there are already a couple of direct clients on board in the U.S. and in Europe, and it has already created work with Havas clients, including Heinz. Asda Appoints Havas London as Its New Creative Agency