Confidential · For WPP executive review

WPP and VML / The Plaice

Agentic Design Consultancy

A six-week design engagement that defines how The Plaice’s physical environment, brand knowledge and AI operate as one experience — before the build budget is committed.

Six weeks · one deliverable per week Two principals · XTG · CRX · SOSO One contract · through AVI-SPL

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The rooms are being priced.The intelligence is not.

The build estimate covers what a room is made of — displays, audio, lighting, control, expertly commissioned. The content belongs with VML, exactly where it should. Between them sits the layer that makes The Plaice what the brief promises: a space that listens, understands, and responds. That layer deserves to be designed, owned and priced on purpose.

01 / Parts and smarts

Five levels. The right one is the level the use case earns.

Parts are the physical layer: screens, projection, film, audio, lighting, sensing and compute. Smarts is everything that decides what the parts do. The brief uses the word AI across all five levels, and they carry very different costs.

Level	What it is	What a visitor notices	What it asks of WPP
0Parts only	Reliable AV, lighting, audio and control, correctly commissioned.	The room works every time.	Nothing new operationally.
1Managed content	Scheduled scenes, playlists and per-client warming. SOSO’s Phosphor sits here.	The room is dressed for the visitor walking in.	Someone owns the content calendar.
2Orchestration	Presets tied to real visit types, sensor and calendar triggers, natural-language control of light and screen.	Far fewer ways for a client visit to go wrong.	Integration access and alignment with WPP standards.
3Assistive intelligence	Live listening, transcription, topic extraction, session synthesis. Colaj and Collateral sit here.	Visitors leave with the summary already written.	Data readiness, consent and retention, privacy review.
4Agentic	Purpose-built agents taking controlled actions across content, rooms and systems. The Forge is an installed proof.	Plain language produces a result, inside approved limits.	A named owner, an operating model, model governance and audit.

XTG view

The Plaice is being sold on level 3 and level 4 behavior, and the build estimate prices level 0. The figure covers audiovisual equipment, freight and labor. Content sits with VML, which is the right place for it and an asset to the project. What no line on either side covers is the orchestration layer between them: agent development, model routing, retrieval against the brand corpus, the guardrails, and the operating model that runs all of it after opening.

02 / The layer

A room that listens is four layers, governed end to end.

Agentic experienceVoice-led creation, guided journeys, live session synthesis, natural-language room actions
Orchestration and toolsAgent workflows, model routing, show-state control, content and lighting commands
Knowledge and dataWPP and VML brand corpus, client context, retrieval, taxonomy, analytics
Physical experienceDVLED, projection, LED film, immersive audio, lighting, sensing and control

Governance — identity, permissions, human approval, brand safety, privacy, auditability — sits beside every layer, because it decides what the room may do while a client is standing in it. The same brief can be delivered modestly or expansively; requirements like response time, model strategy and resilience set the investment. Discovery sets them deliberately, against your budget, before commitments are made.

03 / The six weeks

One working session and one deliverable, every week.

Weeks1–2

Frame the human and brand experience

Audiences, the feeling each moment should produce, journey principles, priority use cases, and the measures of value the experience will be judged against.

Weeks3–4

Design the connected experience system

Map the journey to content, AI, data, physical systems, integrations, and the brand and governance guardrails — so room behavior becomes something engineering can price.

Weeks5–6

Operationalize for scalable delivery

Ownership, measurement, support, partner responsibilities, phasing and budget assumptions. Answers who runs The Plaice on a Tuesday.

Then+

Applied proof

During or just after

A working demonstration built on VML’s own material and brand — not a generic showcase — sized to the approved budget and scoped separately.

The work runs on a deployed agentic stack — ATLAS, FOUNDRY, KILN and CONDUCTOR — with responsive environments by SOSO in production today for names like Google, IBM and the Nobel Peace Center. Every session doubles as enablement for the VML team.

XTG / AVI-SPL · integration, commissioning, service CRX Systems · agentic architecture SOSO · experience design VML / WPP · brand, SMEs, governance

04 / Two routes

Design it alongside the build, or document the hooks.

Route B · Recommended

Design the intelligence layer alongside the build

The six-week engagement runs in parallel with the value engineering already underway. Use cases, data architecture, agent behavior, guardrails, pilot scope and a defensible build ROM get defined while the room design is still open to influence.

Buys: influence while decisions are still reversible, a priced and owned orchestration layer, and a working demo before executive sign-off.

Asks: SME time, data access decisions, governance participation.

Route A

Build the rooms, document the hooks

Take the reprioritized scope to a buildable design at levels 0 to 2. Compute headroom, capture infrastructure and control architecture go in now. Level 3 and 4 capability is documented as reachable and priced later as options.

Buys: the lowest first commitment, and a defensible number inside the target range.

Costs: The Plaice opens as a very good AV environment, and the AI story stays a story.

Converting later

A Route A design that documents the level 3 and 4 hooks can still move to Route B, at the cost of design work rather than equipment. The reverse is harder. Headroom bought during construction costs a fraction of headroom retrofitted after opening.

05 / What WPP owns

Seven artifacts, whether or not the build proceeds.

Experience principles and journey mapAudiences, the desired feeling at each moment, prioritized use cases

Space-by-space behavior and requirementsWhat each zone must do, written so it can be engineered and priced

AI to physical systems and integration mapWhere intelligence runs, and why

Brand, data, privacy and oversight guardrailsWhat the room is permitted to do while a client is in it

Operating, measurement and support frameworkLifecycle, cost visibility, and who answers for behavior

Implementation roadmap and budgetary frameworkPartner responsibilities, phasing, Phase 2 recommendation

Six-month outlook and enablement pathHow the VML team takes it on, and how it keeps evolving

AExperience principles and journey mapAudiences, the desired feeling at each moment, prioritized use cases

BSpace-by-space behavior and requirementsWhat each zone must do, written so it can be engineered and priced

CAI to physical systems and integration mapWhere intelligence runs, and why

DBrand, data, privacy and oversight guardrailsWhat the room is permitted to do while a client is in it

EOperating, measurement and support frameworkLifecycle, cost visibility, and who answers for behavior

FImplementation roadmap and budgetary frameworkPartner responsibilities, phasing, Phase 2 recommendation

GSix-month outlook and enablement pathHow the VML team takes it on, and how it keeps evolving

Designed well, this is not a showpiece — it is a working asset: better meetings and outcomes, impressive work product, stronger community, moments that win leaders and clients over. And what starts on-premises at The Plaice is architected so it could extend across WPP’s global locations.

Team efficiencyA working assetBetter meetings Work productCommunityGlobal potential

06 / The ask

Design the intelligence while the rooms can still be shaped.

The consultancy runs in parallel with the value engineering already underway, so use cases, data architecture, guardrails and pilot scope are defined while the room design is still open to influence. Headroom built in during construction costs a fraction of headroom retrofitted after opening.

Duration: Six weeks. One working session and one deliverable per week.
Team: Two principals, remote, on site as the work requires.
Contracting: Through AVI-SPL. One piece of paper, partners underneath it.
Next step: A scoping conversation to align expectations, deliverables and constraints before anything is signed.

Design consultancy · fixed fee $50,000–$60,000 Range · finalized at scoping

Calculated from expected hours across the six weeks. Separate from the build, and not a prerequisite for the arrival and lab scope to proceed.