By Adam Wakefield
WPP, the world’s largest communications services group, created the academy in close collaboration with its agencies in the region. Through WPP’s partnership with
Red & Yellow School of Logic and Magic in South Africa, the curriculum offers a wide range of accredited skills development programmes, occupationally-directed courses and workshops.
It is expected that nearly 600 candidates in the WPP group of companies will be offered such training this year alone, with the academy having the broad support of WPP’s management, from CEO Sir Martin Sorrell downwards.
Alec Graham, a WPP global client operations director, led the creation of the academy and in a speech at the academy’s launch attended by senior figures within the WPP group among others, touched on how it has been a collaborative effort among the WPP group of companies and non-equity affiliates.
“Skills transfer is an essential success-factor for all our companies, not just in South Africa but in the African continent and beyond the African continent as well,” Graham said.
“There’s an academy in China based in Shanghai and there’s an academy in India based in Mumbai which do different kinds of things, but I think the academy here really has touched all our agencies and is really aiming to train and support our agencies in a far deeper way than the academies elsewhere."
The theme for the launch was ‘It takes a village to raise a child’, an African proverb which Graham thought was very appropriate for what WPP was trying to do.
“WPP is a community of agencies, not just advertising agencies but a community of companies in South Africa and across the continent. Those companies have an obligation and a responsibility to raise talent levels in their companies and in their markets,” he said.
“The ambition of the Africa academy is to improve the tools and training we offer all our people, to grow our talent and help our people reach their full potential. That’s what we are trying to do.”
The academy would support the transformation agenda of the WPP companies, with greater economic benefits to flow through to wider economies in which WPP were active as well.
On WPP working with Red & Yellow, Graham said with the school having an “excellent reputation” locally for the training they deliver, they were an obvious choice for WPP to partner with.
The academy was something both the WPP group of companies and Red & Yellow could be proud of, and the founding of the academy was only the beginning.
“Although it does offer a lot, there is a lot more we can offer. I think this I just a start and we can really build on what we are setting up,” Graham said.