• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, September 6, 2017

Wavemaker. That’s the name of the new WPP media agency being formed by the in-house merger of two existing shops — MEC and Maxus — the holding company confirmed Wednesday.

WPP announced the merger in June. With $38 billion in billings, the resulting entity is being positioned as a “media, content and technology agency.”

Tim Castree, global CEO of MEC and Wavemaker, stated: “Our purpose is to provide advertisers with the power to transform and grow their business through our Purchase Journey obsession; and importantly to do this through the integration of Purchase Journey insights and data with [m]PLATFORM, GroupM’s proprietary global audience technology. Our Wavemaker brand and positioning is a compelling manifestation of that purpose.”

Kelly Clark, global CEO of GroupM, added: “Wavemaker is an exciting new global agency brand with a powerful proposition for clients. Tim and his team have the full support of GroupM’s scale, resources and expertise.”

The merged agency network comprises 8,500 people serving clients in 90 countries via 139 offices around the world. According to the agency, the staff includes a mix of digital, data, content and platform/technology experts.

Major global clients include L’Oréal, Vodafone, Marriott, Colgate-Palmolive and Paramount.

Last month, the agency confirmed that Publicis Media veteran Amanda Richman would be joining in October as CEO of Wavemaker’s U.S. operations.

The agency and its new visual branding identity are still being rolled out to individual markets. The full rollout is expected to be completed by January 2018.