Wavemaker trio charged with rebooting GroupM new business

WPP’s GroupM, still adland’s biggest media agency empire, has been stuttering recently and is trying to do something about it with the formation of what it calls a new “global growth and marketing team.”

And, rather against historical expectations, media agency Wavemaker is firmly on top. Wavemaker was formed by a merger of MEC (once CIA and then Tempus Group) and Maxus, a WPP challenger media agency until it abruptly wasn’t. In GroupM’s line-up Wavemaker was sort of bin ends creation (with a fancy new name.) Ranking behind all-conquering MediaCom and Mindshare, which specialised in big, global accounts.

Under WPP CEO Mark Read tech specialist Essence has been plonked on top of MediaCom in the new EssenceMediacom, which has not, so far, paid off. Mindshare continues to plough its own furrow, for now. Wavemaker, though, has performed well and global CEO Toby Jenner (above) is now also global president Group M clients, heading the new marketing team. Backing him are Wavemaker’s chief growth and marketing officer Hamish Davies and head of growth operations Emma Maple. There are also two from EssenceMediacom and another from Wavemaker (which might worry you if you work at Mindshare.)

In effect it’s a global new business team because that’s where GroupM has been falling behind recently.

GroupM used to get the best deals because it was the biggest, expanding into areas like entertainment because of its size-based clout. Now with 80% of global ad expenditure digital big deals with big media owners have slipped down the agenda and it’s all about data, data and more data. Where WPP, for example, arguably lacks the resources of main rival Publicis.

WPP veteran Brian Lesser has been brought back as the data expert to head GroupM in place of Essence founder Christian Juhl (still with the organisation) while Jenner, with his Wavemaker lieutenants, is heading the shiny new pitch to clients.

You do sometimes think WPP/GroupM might have been better to stick with Maxus (which had a strong team, good new business record and the L’Oreal business in the UK), left MediaCom alone and parked Essence somewhere in the environs of Silicon Valley. As it is, the unlikely Wavemaker has been charged with riding to the rescue.