WPP Names Christian Juhl Global CEO of GroupM, Powerful Ad-Buying Unit
July 23 2019 - 6:25AM
Dow Jones News
By Alexandra Bruell
WPP PLC has promoted Christian Juhl to global chief executive
officer of GroupM, its massive media-buying operation, continuing
an effort to modernize its business units.
Mr. Juhl, 46 years old and currently CEO of GroupM ad-buying
agency Essence, will assume the role on Oct. 1, according to WPP.
He succeeds Kelly Clark, who will become an adviser to both WPP and
GroupM.
GroupM, which buys tens of billions of dollars of commercial
space on behalf of advertisers, houses media agencies Mindshare,
Wavemaker, Mediacom and Essence, as well as digital buying group
Xaxis.
Essence is known for its digital chops and its relationship with
its largest client, Google.
"Christian has the right combination of leadership, people and
technology skills to build the modern media company, something he
has demonstrated extraordinarily well at Essence," said WPP CEO
Mark Read in a statement.
Mr. Juhl will work with the individual agencies to figure out
which data and technology functions to centralize, and what
technology to invest in.
"We have an incredibly good leadership team at the agencies,"
Mr. Juhl said. "What we need to do at the GroupM level is make
their jobs a little easier to be efficient, the best in their
industry, around certain things that we can centralize -- emerging
fields around data, measurement, AI based learning and cloud-based
computing."
The biggest challenge, he added, is creating centralized
approaches that work better for the agencies than their existing
solutions.
He will also work to evolve the company's partnerships with
technology and ad vendors. "We have the global scale to be number
one on every partner around the world," he said. "We should be
setting the bar on what works and what doesn't work and push
them."
WPP has taken steps in the last year to simplify its structure
and reignite growth. This month, WPP agreed to sell a majority
stake in market-research firm Kantar to Bain Capital Private
Equity, raising about $3.1 billion. The ad giant late last year
combined creative agency J. Walter Thompson with digital agency
Wunderman to create a new shop called Wunderman Thompson. The
company also merged creative agency Young & Rubicam with
digital ad firm VML to form VMLY&R.
Within WPP, GroupM also has seen its share of changes, including
the departures of longtime executives Rob Norman and Irwin Gotlieb
in recent years. Both continue to advise or consult for WPP.
In 2017, the ad buying group reorganized, eliminating its Maxus
agency brand and moving the shop's operations into both Essence and
MEC (now called Wavemaker).
Before joining Essence as North America CEO in 2013, Mr. Juhl
was president of the western region of Publicis Groupe's
Razorfish.
Mr. Clark, who will help Mr. Juhl during his transition, had
committed to three years as CEO of GroupM when he took on the role
in 2016, the company said. Previously, he was CEO of Maxus.
Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 23, 2019 06:10 ET (10:10 GMT)
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