Pereira O’Dell, an affiliate of Munich-based holding company Serviceplan, is launching an AI innovation and incubation lab that it says will develop new capabilities/services around AI-powered media, data, optimization, creative, customer experience design, and operations.  

According to the agency, the new lab, based at its offices in San Francisco, has been spun out of its existing AI development lab and is “part of Serviceplan Group’s global AI ecosystem.”  

The agency has hired Silicon Valley entrepreneur Rob Wrubel as managing director of Silverside. Wrubel, who was the first CEO of Ask Jeeves, will work closely with Pereira O’Dell co-founders PJ Pereira and Andrew O’Dell.  

The lab is designed to help keep Serviceplan Group agencies on the leading edge of AI-driven ad technology and related offerings.    

Serviceplan Group has also unveiled an AI Lab in Munich to help strengthen the Group's global AI capacities.  

Several startups are participating in the Silverside lab including Pactto, an AI start-up focused on redefining how creative feedback is exchanged digitally. Other incubation partners include: Beautiful.ai, a AI-powered presentation company; Boomy, a leading AI generation music startup; and Gocharlie, a text and image generator for ad creation.   

In 2023 Serviceplan Group expanded its operations in the U.S. with the creation of Serviceplan Americas and the acquisition of a 30% stake in New York-based agency L&C NYC.  

The Americas launch and M&A deal followed Serviceplan's acquisition of a 30% stake in Pereira O’Dell in 2020. As part of last year’s expansion, O’Dell and Pereira were tapped to serve as, respectively, CEO and chief creative officer of Serviceplan Americas while keeping their roles at their namesake agency, whose clients include IHOP, Mini, Zelle and Adobe.