• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 2, 2008

In an effort to groom a new generation of leaders - and to infuse its organization with some next generation thinking - Publicis' MediaVest unit has formed a new, elite team of its best and brightest junior to mid-level managers who will challenge conventional approaches to media agency management. The new team, dubbed the Impact Circle, is the result of a long, internal task force project that determined the best way to infuse new thinking - and to retain some of the shop's brightest new thinkers - was to empower them by making them part of a new leadership team.

"It was almost an 'American Idol'-like process," Bill Tucker, CEO of MediaVest USA, says of the way MediaVest selected the 15 young execs who comprise the Impact Circle. They range from manager (a media supervisor level position at most agencies) to senior vice president, and they represent the best and brightest thinkers across all the disciplines inside MediaVest. What they have in common, Tucker says, is that they all want to impact the culture of the organization.

They also represent some of MediaVest's brightest up-and-comers, and the irony of putting their names on a very public list (see below) might not also make them desirable candidates to be raided by talent-hungry rival agencies, media companies or marketing organizations. But he notes that it also is a means of bonding promising talent to the organization by giving younger individuals a voice that can affect the management of the agency, and by also giving them greater visibility and a path to senior management.

"When this opportunity came up and we all raised our hands, the goal for everybody was to figure out what's the best way to get new ideas for the agency," says Brendan Clifford, a connections manager, who stepped forward to be part of the new inner circle. Asked it the enhanced visibility might not make him a more desirable candidate to other organizations, Clifford demurred, and said the goal was to make MediaVest a better place to work, which would help the organization retain and grow more of its people - and maybe even attract the best and brightest from outside organizations.

"From my perspective, this is the opening of a two-way flow of communication," he explains. "A lot of agencies are run form the top down, and there's not a lot of input from people who are on the daily grind."

MediaVest, in fact, has been in the process of reorganizing for about three or four years, the last couple under Tucker's oversight, and before that, Laura Desmond who ultimately went on to become global CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, and a senior member of Publicis' media management team.

Tucker notes the MediaVest organization already has an executive team comprised of its most senior management, and a "director's circle" comprised of 35 "fairly senior" managers who directly oversee business plans and client relationships. The goal of the new impact circle is to bring in new thinking that challenges the process-driven focus of those senior management teams, and to ensure that MediaVest always thinks outside the box.

"What was missing was entrepreneurial thought leadership. They became too process oriented. They are all about the things we have to do vs. all the things we'd love to do," Tucker says of the inspiration behind the impact circle. "MediaVest seeks to drive a culture of impact. That's impacting our clients businesses and the product we deliver for them."

Asked if the name "impact circle" has anything to do with a metaphor for the impact area where a bomb is detonated, Tucker says it was not "intentional," but, "it is possible that we may blow some things up to get to the next level."

The 15-members of the circle include:

Jennifer Byrnes, Connections Associate Director
Brendan Clifford, Connections Manager
Megan Culler, Activation Associate
Jeffrey Gipson, Connections Associate Director
Rachel Greenspan, Activation Associate
Dan Kern, Connections Associate Director
Kimberly Lyons, VP, Innovation Director
Tania Martino, Connections Manager
Sarah Personette, VP, Connections Director
Shaun Rudy, Connections Manager
Vincent Sauvagnargues, SVP, Group Client Director
Scott Schwartz, Connections Associate Director
Jen Soch, VP, Activation Director, Advanced TV
Christine Stack, Staffing Manager, Human Resources
Rebecca Tumulty, VP, Operations Associate Director