WPP Moves Maxus Executives to Essence
June 15 2017 - 8:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Alexandra Bruell
As WPP PLC consolidates some of its media agencies, it is the
company's new digital buying agency Essence that will be adding a
slate of new senior executives.
WPP recently announced that it's collapsing ad buying firm Maxus
into sister agency MEC, but it turns out that consolidation won't
include all of Maxus's leadership team.
Essence, which was acquired by WPP in 2015, is taking a handful
of senior executives from Maxus as part of the restructuring.
Steve Williams, chief executive of Maxus Americas, will become
North America CEO at Essence. Nick Baughan will become CEO of EMEA
for Essence, after serving as CEO of Maxus U.K. Damian Blackden
joins as chief strategy officer, after holding that same role at
Maxus. Simeon Duckworth, a GroupM data executive, will also join
Essence as global head of strategy and analytics.
They will all be "transitioning into their new roles over the
coming months," the agency said.
The consolidation of Maxus into MEC will generate cost savings
that could help Essence continue to expand into new markets and
diversify its capabilities beyond its digital expertise. The senior
appointments signal an even greater investment in Essence.
"For years, Essence has harnessed granular event-level data to
deeply understand audiences, moments and outcomes to deliver
world-class digital advertising," said Essence's global chief
executive, Christian Juhl, in a statement. "Our firm intent is to
apply the very same techniques, combined with machine learning and
new modelling approaches, to inform targeting decisions and
measurement across all media channels. This requires us to bring on
leaders with a broad range of skill sets and experience."
It isn't immediately clear how Maxus's accounts will be divided
up, but new business should help to diversify not only Essence's
capabilities, but also its client base, which has been heavily
skewed toward Google. Essence also works with clients like Target,
Walgreens and the Financial Times.
Maxus, a nine-year-old firm with 70 offices, touts clients such
as NBCUniversal and Barclays, which is currently under review.
Maxus, MEC and Essence are all part of GroupM, WPP's media
agency network.
Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 15, 2017 08:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
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