The largest communications group in the world WPP will be consolidating the location of its agencies in the Czech Republic. A total of twelve group agencies will relocate to the address of Bubenská 1 in Prague by the Vltavská metro station. The functionalist building by Hlávkův most, which until recently was home to shoe seller Footshop or Forbidden Spot by the formation Life is Porno, will undergo extensive renovations for over CZK 1 billion. It should start functioning in 2021 and will be ready to receive as many as 1 500 WPP employees. Currently the group has around 1 200 employees in the Czech Republic.
The former City of Prague Electric Company building belongs to the CPI Property Group of billionaire Radovan Vítek. WPP's local agencies will have a long-term lease there, with the agreement starting in 2020 for a period of 18 years. They will become the primary tenant, taking up nearly two thirds of the premises, over 16 300 square metres of the total area of 25 500.
Moving into the new headquarters will thus be the agencies Ogilvy, VMLY&R, Wunderman, JWT, Geometry, Kantar TNS, Kantar Millward Brown and media companies GroupM, Mindshare, Mediacom, Wavemaker and H1.cz. The group will therefore be leaving its traditional headquarters in Prague 5 on Nádražní and Rozkošného streets (VMLY&R, Wunderman, JWT, GroupM, Mediacom, Mindshare, Wavemaker, H1.cz) and Prague 7 on Přívozní (Ogilvy, Geometry). Kantar Millward Brown will be moving from Prague 1, Kantar TNS from Prague 9. The Brno branch of Ogilvy on the other hand will logically be remaining in the Moravian metropolis.
The Prague relocation follows the group's strategy of office campuses, which already exist in Amsterdam, Madrid and Milan. Internally this should foster collaboration, while externally it facilitates client access to the individual agencies. "Concentrating our agencies at a single site brings more opportunities for closer and more flexible cooperation. We can thus maximise our offering to clients, who gain better access to top talent and our professional expertise," believes WPP's CEO Mark Read. Several years ago we consolidated our media agencies, and doing the same now with the whole group is a logical step," added David Lhota, the WPP Country Manager for the Czech Republic.
Taken from mediar.cz