• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, August 26, 2019

GroupM agency Essence is promoting North American CEO Steve Williams to Global Chief Operating Officer. Jason Harrison succeeds him in the NA post. 

In his new role, Williams will manage the agency’s business operations and continued expansion in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. 

Williams joined Essence in 2018 in the NA CEO post. He’s credited with helping to scale the agency’s organizational capacity, leading new business efforts, and driving its evolution from programmatic specialist full-service media agency. 

Earlier, Williams served as CEO of Maxus in North America, president of Omnicom’s PHD USA operations, and CEO of OMD Group in the UK. 

Previously, Harrison was CEO of Team Arrow, a GroupM team created to serve Target that became part of Essence in 2017. He has also served as Worldwide CEO of the WPP marketing consultancy Gain Theory, Chief Information Officer at both Maxus and Universal McCann, and director, information management for Johnson & Johnson. 

In their new roles, both Williams and Harrison, based in New York and Minneapolis, respectively, will report to Essence’s incoming Global CEO Kyoko Matsushita, based in San Francisco.  

Earlier this month, Matsushita was tapped to succeed Christian Juhl as Global CEO of the agency as Juhl prepares to step up to his new role as Global CEO of GroupM on October 1.