• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, April 26, 2022

GroupM announced today that it is merging four agencies into two with Essence and MediaCom merging into EssenceMediacom and Mindshare and Neo completing an integration that was begun several years ago.

The company, which has about $50 billion in total billings under management for clients, is also grouping a handful of specialist units-- Finecast, Xaxis, and GroupM Services (activation) under a new umbrella media performance organization called GroupM Nexus. 

Nick Lawson who has been Global CEO of MediaCom will lead the newly formed EssenceMediacom as Global CEO. Kyoko Matsushita, after eight years at the helm of Essence, is promoted to a new role as WPP’s CEO in Japan.

Nicolas Bidon, Global CEO of Xaxis will oversee GroupM Nexus as Global CEO.  

Adam Gerhart continues as Global CEO of Mindshare and will work with Neo CEO Nasreen Madhany to merge the two agencies.

The combined EssenceMediacom will have 10,000 employees across 125 offices when the integration is finalized in 2023.

GroupM Global CEO Christian Juhl stated, “Through GroupM Nexus and our agency powerhouses Mindshare, Wavemaker, and EssenceMediacom we are building a tech-enabled future, side-by-side with our clients, that is accountable to advertisers’ growth goals and to our vision for an advertising ecosystem that works for everyone.”

The moves follow the launch of Choreograph, WPP’s global data and technology company, in April 2021.

The moves also represent the latest wave of consolidation within WPP which earlier merged MEC with Maxus to form Wavemaker, VML and Y&R into VMLY&R, JWT and Wunderman into Wunderman Thompson and Grey into AKQA.