• by Steve McClellan , December 2, 2013

WPP’s Mindshare is taking steps to beef up its Chicago and Los Angeles offices.

David Adelman, a senior New York-based client account executive at the agency, is relocating to Chicago to manage the shop’s office there, effective January 1.

Adelman succeeds Mary Carpenter, who is taking on a new North America role in which she is tasked with building out the agency’s Performance Marketing Group. Carpenter will remain based in Chicago.

Colin Kinsella, Mindshare’s CEO for North America, said that Adelman’s “client work over the last few years has been brilliant.”

As to Carpenter’s new role, Kinsella said, “We do a lot of performance marketing work for clients but we’re not as good as we should be and we’re not tapping into the e-commerce layer as we should be.”  Carpenter, he said, “has a real passion for this,” and has experience in the area. 

“We’re really investing in Chicago,” said Kinsella, noting that in January the agency will be announcing the hiring of a new North America communications planning lead executive who will also be based in Chicago. That executive will report to Jordan Bitterman, who joined Mindshare as chief strategy officer earlier this year.  

Kinsella said he believes that Chicago is an “incredibly strong advertising and media market and I want to make sure that Chicago is very robust for us.”

The same is true for Los Angeles, where the agency won the estimated $400 million consolidated Lionsgate media assignment earlier this year. Lee Doyle, the former MEC North American CEO who joined Mindshare in 2012 as president, client development, was a key player in the Lionsgate pitch. And a few months back he relocated from New York to Los Angeles to oversee the agency’s office there.

“That’s a real push for us too, to establish a much stronger LA presence,” said Kinsella.

Adelman joined Mindshare in 2007 as CMO. In 2011 he switched to running accounts, including overseeing Jaguar Land Rover and Chanel. He joined Mindshare from Johnson & Johnson where he was media director. Earlier he had roles at media shop Mediaedge (a predecessor to MEC) and sister agency Y&R.

Carpenter has been head of Mindshare’s Chicago office since September of 2012.  Prior to that, she was executive vice president and managing director of Halogen Response Media, the direct marketing arm of Starcom MediaVest Group. Earlier, she was EVP, Starcom USA, where she oversaw accounts such as Hallmark, Nintendo, Walgreens and Sara Lee.