Industry veteran John Steedman has been appointed to the newly created role of chair of WPP Media Services Australia and New Zealand in the newly combined WPP AUNZ group.
Steedman, who is also a director on the board of WPP AUNZ, will be tasked with working with the group’s media agency leads to develop an overarching business strategy for its combined media business. The unit includes agencies such as Ikon, Bohemia, MediaCom, Mindshare, MEC and Maxus.
While the structure of the individual businesses will remain unchanged, Steedman says a major focus will be getting them to work collaboratively where possible.
He says that while individually the agencies are already successful, together “they will be a force to be reckoned with”.
“We’ll be trying to achieve greater horizontality,” Steedman says. “That means Ikon remains as is, GroupM remains as is, and other agencies also remain unchanged. What is different is the ability to drive collaborative opportunities for our clients across a greater breadth of capability.”
Media is one of the six business units in the new structure for the merged entity and it brings GroupM, Ikon and Bohemia alongside each other.
There has been speculation in the market about what would happen to Ikon as part of the new organisation, with rumours it would become part of GroupM in Australia.
In New Zealand, Ikon is part of GroupM, but the circumstances are rather different. When GroupM was trying to expand in the market in 2014, it did so by bringing Ikon into the fold, as the agency was more established that GroupM’s agencies there - Ikon New Zealand already partnered with Maxus and Mindshare there. GroupM New Zealand was led by Sean Seamer – now CEO of MediaCom.
Mike Connaghan, CEO of WPP AUNZ, speaking to AdNews immediately following a shareholder vote to combine the STW and WPP businesses earlier this month, said that would “not be happening” in Australia, although Ikon would be able to tap into GroupM's scale in this market.
“The NZ deal happened because GroupM was a startup and Ikon was established so it made sense to bring in Ikon to give them some scale – it’s a very different situation to here, where GroupM is very big, but Ikon has its own scale,” Connaghan said.
“It will be able to lean in to WPP and take the things it likes, but it will remain independent … Ikon, with an unique position is really important,” he said.
Connaghan did say he will be looking to organise the group, which is comprised of 90 agencies, into business units. While an exact structure is still to be confirmed, it is thought that the areas will include media, research and insights, PR and government, agencies (broadly its creative shops), shopper and production, and digital and specialist units.
As a result, it could be likely that other business units could also be given a chair role to oversee collective business strategy.
Connaghan also says the merger balanced the group's portfolio given STW's strengths in advertising, digital and PR and WPP's strength in media and data.
On the new appointment, Connaghan says Steedman's experience in the media industry will help the group move through its next phase of growth.
“John has an innate ability to get business cooperating for the benefit of clients,” Connaghan says.
Read a full feature on the impact of the WPP STW merger in the current issue of AdNews, where we also interview Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. You can subscribe in print, or through iTunes or Zinio for a digital version you can read on desktop, Apple or Android devices.
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