• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, June 6, 2019

As marketers have struggled to achieve growth in the recent years, they’ve gotten very good at cutting costs and Adland has proven to be an irresistible target.

So much so that the agency business has allowed itself to become commoditized, according to Tim Castree, the recently appointed North American CEO at WPP’s GroupM.

Castree made his remarks at a pre-Cannes Lions soiree that GroupM put together earlier this week at its spiffy new offices at 3 World Trade Center in downtown New York City.

The affair had a certain Cannes-like feel to it: set outdoors on a terrace with magnificent views of the city on a cloudless day with (of course) rosé on the menu.

But amid the merriment, Castree did have a message to convey: Agencies need to do a better job of selling their value to clients if they want to become de-commoditized.

“We need to get back to the growth conversation with CMOs,” Castree said. And part of that conversation should be about better presenting the solutions and capabilities that agencies possess that can help their clients achieve higher growth in the future.

Castree’s remarks followed a reorganization of his U.S. management team that included the hiring of a new U.S. Chief Marketing Officer, Jill Kelly, who is joining GroupM from Publicis Groupe’s Digitas.