GroupM Nexus, WPP’s performance media investment group, has made new leadership appointments following the recent merger of its media agencies.
Earlier this year, WPP completed a series of mergers between its media agencies, including the creation of GroupM Nexus, which brought together the digital and media services of GroupM Services, Xaxis, Finecast and Copilot, a proprietary AI technology.
In addition to GroupM Nexus, the company completed two other consolidations – Essence and Mediacom to form EssenceMediaCom and Mindshare with global performance agency Neo.
“GroupM Nexus unites leading digital media talent, service excellence, cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology and unique partnerships at scale in a new multi-channel performance organization with one goal: to power the growth of our people, our agencies and the incredible brands they represent,” said Nicolas BidonGroupM Nexus Global CEO in a statement.
The new organization has 9,000 practitioners from around the world under its wing. They are collectively responsible for activating the more than two million campaigns that GroupM manages each year.
Among the new management hires are Bidon as Global CEO of GroupM Nexus and John Wittesaele as Global CEO of Xaxis.
The other appointments are:
- Colin BarlowCOO (previously President, GroupM Services)
- Silvia SparryChief Transformation Officer (previously Global COO, Xaxis)
- Rich AstleyChief Product Officer (formerly Global Chief Product Officer, Finecast)
- Jodi WeintraubGlobal Chief Human Resources Officer (previously Global Chief Human Resources Officer, GroupM Services)
- Henry StokesGlobal President, Agency Enablement (previously Global Managing Director, Clients, Xaxis)
These appointments follow earlier additions that were made earlier this year. These appointments included Sargi Mannworld leader in activation practices; JiYoung KimPresident of GroupM Nexus for North America; Girish Menon, Global Offshore COO; and Nicholas Lewis: Global CEO of Finecast.
The company plans to make more changes in the coming months.