• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 4, 2020

Christian Juhl — who took over as Global CEO at GroupM six months ago — continues to put his stamp on the organization, today shaking up management at the firm’s UK operation.

Tom George, who served as GroupM’s UK CEO since 2018, is out and is being replaced by Karen Blackett. Blackett will be doing double duty — she has been WPP’s UK country manager for the last two years, and retains that position while taking on the GroupM role.

In its full-year earnings report issued last month, WPP called out GroupM UK for a particularly poor fourth0quarter 2019 performance, which probably explains the switch, at least in part.

With a background in media, Blackett’s learning curve won't be that steep. She is pretty familiar with GroupM’s UK operation, or at least the MediaCom part of it. She joined MediaCom in 1999, ascending to Chief Operations Officer in EMEA in 2008 and then U.K. CEO in 2011. She was promoted to Chairwoman of MediaCom U.K. & Ireland, the post she held when she was upped to WPP UK country manager.

As GroupM UK, CEO Blackett will be responsible for strategy and operations throughout the U.K. across GroupM’s agencies including Mindshare, MediaCom, Wavemaker, Essence and m/Six. GroupM U.K. is the group’s third largest market.