Will the last person to leave GroupM please turn out the lights? WPP’s media behemoth has lost a stream of executives recently – EssenceMediacom global CEO Nick Lawson departed in December, EM global COO Frances Ralston-Good left last week and now GroupM EMEA CEO (and recently IPA president) Josh Krichefski is leaving after 14 years.
Krichefski (left) says: “Staying number one is hard. But when your people feel valued, listened to and supported, anything is possible. I have always felt valued, and I hope my teams have too. So, I leave with a great deal of gratitude. I am going to give myself some time off for the first time in three decades to think about what comes next.”
GroupM, in effect a holding company within WPP for media agencies EssenceMediacom, Mindshare and Wavemaker, has had a torrid time recently, losing big accounts like Sky in the UK and Europe and grappling with a number of pretty disastrous leadership choices.
Newly re-installed global boss Brian Lesser is clearly wielding the axe, presumably with the support of WPP CEO Mark Read. But such high level departures disturb clients. It’s hard to see what departed EM CEO Nick Lawson, who left last year, did wrong. When EssenceMediacom was on its own it was the biggest media agency in the world with an unmatched new business record. Plonking digital specialist Essence on top of it in an intra-company merger has been disastrous.
Update: Michael Karg, global chief operating officer of Mindshare, is Krichefski’s replacement as GroupM CEO of Europe. Middle East and Africa is now a separate unit.
