Tag: GroupM

Bangkok, Thailand – Media investment company GroupM has appointed Pathamawan Sathaporn as its chief executive officer for Thailand, effective 1 May 2022. She assumes the portfolio held by Niklas Stalberg who will be leaving the network after a decade of service.

Pathamawan crosses over from her current position as CEO of Mindshare Thailand where she held various leadership roles for over one and a half decades. She will be reporting to Himanshu Shekhar, whose remit as CEO of GroupM Indonesia and Vietnam has been expanded to include Thailand. As CEO of GroupM Thailand, Indonesia & Vietnam, Shekhar will report to Ashutosh Srivastava, CEO of GroupM Asia-Pacific.

Speaking about her appointment, Sathaporn said, “I am honoured to embark on a journey that is both familiar and new – the purple blood running through my veins has now taken on a shade of blue. Growing alongside Mindshare the past 16 years, I feel privileged to have witnessed the dramatic evolution of the media landscape which sets us up for new adventures daily.”

She added, “At GroupM, I look forward to building pathways for our talents to flourish in their careers, accelerate our capabilities to continue doing great work for our clients, and bring to life our company’s aspiration to make advertising work better for people in Thailand.”

Having spent two decades within the GroupM network, Himanshu rose through the ranks in Mindshare managing the business in volume-heavy India as well as Indonesia. He was appointed CEO of Mindshare Southeast Asia from 2014 to 2018. 

Meanwhile, Shekhar commented, “The group’s strategy to cluster Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam under one unified leadership will strengthen market capabilities and network agility. Given the breadth and depth of resources across these three important markets, we will be able to scale our capabilities and solutions to deliver enhanced value for all our clients and partners. I am thrilled to partner with an illustrious leader like Pathamawan whose depth of field experience in Thailand will undoubtedly propel us into an even more glorious future.”

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Media investment company GroupM and global outdoor advertising technology provider Moving Walls have partnered to bring automation and accountability to digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising in Malaysia.

The partnership enables clients of GroupM agencies, namely Mindshare, m/Six, MediaCom, and Wavemaker, to leverage Moving Audiences Plus, an audience data-driven planning, buying, measurement, and ad-play verification solution that can activate all connected DOOH screens across the country.

Moving Walls has developed a comprehensive technology stack including a DOOH planning tool that predicts audiences based on the most recent movement trends, a demand-side platform that activates against these plans, and an in-campaign analytics tool that measures actual campaign performance that can then be compared against the predictions.

The inventory is connected to this ecosystem by Location Media Xchange (LMX), the supply-focused subsidiary of the Moving Walls group and a variety of advertisers including Chevron, Dell, Lancome, and Shell have already run outcome-based outdoor advertising campaigns powered by the new solution. Through this new solution, clients will now be able to estimate and measure audience delivery down to specific ad plays rather than relying on historical vehicle traffic numbers. 

Anne Leow, GroupM Malaysia’s head of GroupM Outdoor, shared that as outdoor advertising embraces digital efficiencies, it is important to first streamline and legitimise the delivery of the advertising in a manner that is verifiable by all parties – the media owner, media buyer, and the tech providers. 

“This partnership enables us to apply market-leading DOOH technology to optimise media spends across thousands of screens that are present in different venues, both indoor and outdoor locations,” said Leow.

Meanwhile, Srikanth Ramachandran, Moving Walls Group’s founder and CEO, commented that they are excited to launch this with GroupM Malaysia in a market that has some of the region’s most iconic DOOH sites and where many static sites continue to convert to digital panels. 

“Verification of ad plays and campaign performance will improve confidence amongst brands to extend their digital video campaigns to the big screens,” said Ramachandran.

Singapore – Media investment company GroupM has appointed Anito Munro to the role of chair of the APAC investment council, on top of her new role as chief investment officer for Southeast Asia and North Asia. Munro will be steering the group’s investment strategy across the burgeoning markets in the region from 1 April 2022. 

Munro will be part of GroupM’s APAC leadership team, reporting to Ashutosh Srivastava, CEO of GroupM APAC, and Andrew Meaden, GroupM’s global chief investment officer.

With two decades of agency experience, Munro crosses over from GroupM’s agency Mindshare, where she was most recently chief investment officer of Mindshare for APAC. At Mindshare, she had led the media business for LVMH at L’Atelier; while throughout her tenure in APAC, Munro has led the investment activities for key client accounts including Unilever, L’Oréal, Huawei, Ford, Jetstar, Mondelez, and more.

Speaking about her appointment, she said that with GroupM’s global scale and unparalleled reach, they are poised to shape a new era of media by helping clients apportion their media spend for good, while extracting maximum value for their investments.

“As the first woman to helm the chair role on our regional investment committee, I’m thrilled to be part of an organisation that’s leading the charge to cultivate greater equity and diversity across the entire industry. Together with our investment community, I look forward to continuing creating value for clients across the entire media supply chain, and propel us towards a more sustainable and vibrant media future,” she stated.

Meanwhile, Srivastava commented, “Anita’s diverse experience across a plethora of roles that span client leadership, investment, strategic planning and operations has gifted her with a deep appreciation and understanding of the holistic business as well as the investment needs of clients and markets.” 

She added, “As we continue to help our clients evolve their media strategies in an increasingly digital and biddable world, Anita will undoubtedly be a transformative force in stewarding responsible investment that will make advertising work better for people.”

London, United Kingdom — Reddit, the social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website, has entered into a long-term consultative partnership with global marketing communications company, WPP. The partnership, a first of its kind for Reddit, and led by its global agency development team, will strengthen Reddit’s on and off-platform commerce offering by closely aligning with WPP’s industry-leading commerce roadmap.

The partnership will tap into the commerce and technology expertise across WPP and its media agencies within GroupM through quarterly advisory meetings. Teams will consult on Reddit’s commerce strategy, ensuring it incorporates the latest insights and intelligence from across the WPP network. WPP will receive a first look at Reddit’s commerce solutions with early access to alpha and beta tests so both companies can collaborate on joint products to take to shared clients. The joint collaboration will also include a joint research piece, to test the effectiveness of future commerce products on Reddit, along with a training program through Reddit Ads Formula, which soft-launched last year.

Reddit builds on its existing partnership with WPP media arm, GroupM, which was one of the very first to meet with Reddit’s ads product team when it was first introduced, this partnership will widen the aperture of Reddit’s relationship with WPP and help inform Reddit’s long term commerce strategy, firmly cementing its role in the wider commerce mix.

Harold Klaje, global EVP and president of advertising for Reddit, commented, “Online communities are not new but they have emerged throughout the pandemic as an integral part of the commerce mix thanks to the highly influential role they play in the consumer path to purchase. I am excited to further strengthen our relationship with WPP and its suite of clients as we continue to collaborate and build together, tapping into the holding company’s impressive expertise and working towards mutually beneficial outcomes for our advertising partners.”

Meanwhile, Amanda Grant, vice president, managing partner, and global head of social for GroupM, said that being a part of the Reddit product council in the past year has given them a seat at the table in terms of early product design, leading to better-aligned product development and advertiser interest.

“The partnership brings key stakeholders in early enough to steer concepts rather than confirm a formed hypothesis. GroupM and WPP are approaching commerce evolution much more methodically with our partners, as our performance expertise helps to connect user behaviours, to platform utility, and finally advertiser need. We are looking forward to richer contributions and partnership with Reddit,” Grant said.

Many WPP client brands are already working with Reddit to drive commerce solutions through Reddit’s highly engaged user base and 100,000+ communities. WPP was also an instrumental part of Reddit’s Product Council, which launched last year as a first-look and feedback session for key partners regarding Reddit’s evolving ads product roadmap. This new partnership will see Reddit and WPP continue to partner on client campaigns with a particular focus on lower-funnel education, strategy, and tactics to drive the strongest purchase outcomes.

The partnership comes as Reddit continues to grow its Global Agency Development team, which has recently appointed London-based Susanne Schmid who joins from Facebook where she was regional agency lead and will serve as Reddit’s global agency lead for WPP. Additionally, former VP, global head of partnerships at Verizon Media, John Baylon has also joined the team as the regional agency lead for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia (EMEA), and will be responsible for servicing all holding companies across EMEA in a newly-developed role.

Karachi, Pakistan — Media investment group GroupM announced the Pakistan launch of its AI-powered brand-safe influencer marketing solution, INCA during its latest virtual event. Leveraging GroupM’s remarkable scale, INCA connects brands to a vast network of reliable publishers and influencers to create and promote content in social channels that will drive brand engagement across digital platforms.

With the platform now entering Pakistan, clients in the country can now leverage the additional benefit of global expertise and run campaigns across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Assisting these clients is INCA’s specialist teams in four regions and 30 countries who have created more than 2,500 campaigns with over 100,000 content pieces for more than 300 unique clients around the world.

INCA’s proprietary end-to-end AI-powered platform provides numerous useful offerings namely unique creator and audience insights, fraud detection, workflow tools, content amplification, and detailed campaign reporting dashboards. It leverages a proprietary algorithm that uses real-time data to source, curate, and match influencers and publishers to a brand’s campaign objectives to deliver the most credible partners and content for the greatest impact.

Naveed Asghar, CEO of GroupM Pakistan, commented, “We are thrilled about INCA’s launch in Pakistan. We look forward to helping brands scale up their digital campaigns through our best-in-class AI-enabled influencer marketing technology to guarantee not only effective marketing but also connect brands with relevant, authentic influencers and publishers.”

With INCA’s trusted and scalable solutions, the platform can accommodate publishers, influencers, and their content needs to be manually identified, screened, and managed to ensure quality and brand safety, as the trend of fake followers enabled by bots makes it harder to tell if an influencer is a genuine and valuable creator.

Ghulam Jillani, business director (INCA) of GroupM Pakistan, said, “Using technology to challenge norms is the route to change the landscape. INCA addresses these challenges to provide a trusted network of verified influencer partners and campaign management processes. With this step, we expect for the ecosystem to change in order for us to bring that change in Pakistan we have INCA at GroupM.”

Meanwhile, Ateeq Rehman, CIO of GroupM Pakistan, shared, “At INCA, we build genuine relationships between brands, consumers, and creators to drive business outcomes for clients and maximise returns on their digital spend. Influencer marketing is growing at a phenomenal pace in Pakistan and we look forward to implementing INCA’s influencer marketing solutions for our valued clients in this region.”

Singapore — MediaCom, the media agency by media investment company GroupM, has promoted its regional chief product officer for APAC Josh Gallagher to now become the chief operating officer for APAC. The COO role is newly created and is designed to provide additional senior support for the network’s teams and enhanced leadership to clients.

MediaCom shared that the decision to create this role was made by newly appointed APAC CEO Rupert McPetrie and reflects the growth the agency has experienced over the last year, bagging multiple awards from various distinguished organizations.

Gallagher joined the GroupM network in 2018 from Havas where he was APAC CSO in the role of chief product officer, MediaCom APAC. As the agency’s product suite and capabilities have grown, Gallagher has been essential in helping the company across performance and eCommerce and has led the global commerce consulting offering within BLINK Consulting. 

In his new role as COO for APAC, he is tasked to ensure that the agency builds on the business momentum by scaling its capabilities, through MediaCom’s distinctive and differentiated offering of its ethos ‘Seeing The Bigger Picture’, and by consistently delivering for the agency’s clients across the region.

Mcpetrie commented on the promotion, saying, “It’s always fantastic when you can look inside your organisation and find someone who is perfect for the most senior roles. Josh has done a terrific job building new capabilities and products for our clients over the last three years and has also played a significant role in our new business successes, including the recent wins of Bayer and The Coca-Cola Company. He will be an amazing COO for our region and will help MediaCom continue its successful trajectory.” 

Gallagher shared his enthusiasm for his newly assumed role, saying, “I look forward to bringing a forward-thinking and challenging mindset to the role, helping our people and clients continually grow. My focus will be on driving the culture to do so. In an industry that is ever-changing, being able to evolve the way we work through more agile talent and technology capabilities will deliver work that transforms our clients’ businesses.” 

Singapore — Media investment group GroupM has announced the appointment of Anne Ng, former senior director for corporate communications in Lagardéré Sports, as the new director of marketing and communications for the Asia-Pacific. Ng will lead communication strategies for the APAC market, moving forward GroupM’s vision of “Making Advertising Work Better for People”.

Ng holds extensive experience in marketing campaigns for high-value clients. Aside from her director role at Lagardère Sports, she’s held positions as communications manager for Singapore Grand Prix where she was in charge of the media centre and press functions for Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix. She also authored and published a book, produced an HIV anti-stigmatisation movie, and founded a publishing and communications consultancy ‘A Good Word’ prior to joining GroupM.

At Lagardère Sports, Ng headed corporate communication functions across APAC and the Middle East and was instrumental in amplifying the company’s brand equity in Greater China.

Ng will join the APAC regional leadership team. She reports to Ashutosh Srivastava, CEO of GroupM APAC, and Jill Kelly, chief marketing officer of GroupM Global.

Ng shared her thoughts on the appointment, saying, “As many media evangelists like me will attest to, GroupM is a leading, visionary brand whose work has fundamentally transformed the landscape of media, influenced consumer habits, and shaped global culture. GroupM is poised to be a force for good and I look forward to maximizing the potential of our trailblazing talents across the region, help strengthen the agencies’ already powerful legacies, and generate far-reaching value for clients.”

Meanwhile, Srivastava welcomed the investment group’s new signing.

“We extend a very warm welcome to Anne whose values, mindset, and wealth of experiences dovetail with the GroupM ethos. She will work closely with our regional leadership team to drive our collective agenda in shaping a new era of advertising that’s focused on bettering businesses and benefiting communities,” Srivastava said.

Last November, GroupM held its third annual ad marketing conference entitled SourceCode in Malaysia, which saw the company inviting key leaders from several top-tier brands to talk about how they are shaping the marketing landscape.

Singapore – MediaCom, the media agency by media investment company GroupM, has announced the appointment of Rupert McPetrie as APAC CEO, following the upcoming departure of Mark Heap, who is moving within the group to join sister agency Mindshare as its EMEA CEO.

McPetrie, who will also continue his current role as CEO for Greater China, will expand his area of responsibility to lead the regional operations of the WPP-owned network and take responsibility for more than 1600 people across 21 offices. He will also join the MediaCom Worldwide Exco and will be reporting directly to Global CEO Nick Lawson. 

Rupert holds extensive experience in Greater China having spent six years leading MediaCom in the region. Aside from his work in MediaCom, he’s held leadership roles in regional operations during his time as the CEO of media company Zenith for Central and Eastern Europe.

Lawson shared his praises for the upcoming APAC CEO.

“Rupert is quite simply a brilliant leader. Throughout his time leading our China operations, he has developed numerous client solutions and brought the best talent to our agency via game-changing solutions and capabilities, such as Incite Consulting and China Passport. All his great work has grown our business from number 6 to number 2 in the market, and we look forward to him reapplying this magic across the region building on Mark’s outstanding legacy,” Lawson said. 

McPetrie said he is thrilled to take on this expanded role and have the opportunity to work with all the people and clients to build on the strong business momentum the company has in the region.

“This is in part due to the recent slew of new business wins, such as The Coca Cola Company and Bayer, but importantly also down to our incredible clients and the work we do for them across APAC. Our People First, Better Results proposition has been at the heart of our growth, together with our extended Bigger Picture capabilities that drive our clients’ businesses forward,” Mcpetrie said.

Malaysia – Media investment agency GroupM has held its third annual ad marketing conference in Malaysia, SourceCode, which brought in key leaders and brand decision-makers from top-value brands such as Unilever, Fonterra, Coca-Cola, and Oppo to discuss current trends and phenomena that are currently shaping the future of marketing.

Held virtually in November 2021, SourceCode was joined by key leaders from GroupM’s agencies such as Mindshare, MediaCom, and Xaxis as well as representatives from Unruly, Metamorfosa, and DoubleVerify for a series of roundtables where key main three themes of discussion emerged – the future of e-commerce, the role of talent in building a diverse workplace, and the stronger call for leadership responsibility in the fast-evolving market ecosystem.

During the event, the fresh concept of ‘E-joy’ was discussed, which refers to the wonderful feeling derived from the perks of e-commerce – its convenience, versatility, and the bouquet of brands and offerings such as online-only promotions and attractive bundles.

“The number of hours spent in a week by a highly engaged audience looking to discover and purchase, means e-commerce is all set to win, especially with the advent of online marketplaces,” said Tejas Kirodiwal, head of growth at Zalora, at SourceCode. 

Moving forward, leaders agree that the future of e-commerce is ‘entertainment commerce’. 

Another topic in focus at SourceCode is the issue of ‘The Great Resignation’ and how technology can help cultivate teams of the future that are inclusive and diversified. 

“We need to see talents as our invested business partners. Therefore, they have to be managed using technology, the same way we manage our marketing investments,” said Rashi Kalucha, regional HR lead business partner for APAC at GroupM. 

In the event, an open call was made to HR practitioners to better leverage technology to “track, measure, learn from and create solutions” that will boost employee retention and enhance their overall welfare. 

Lastly, participants agreed at the conference that marketers need to assume leadership responsibility in resolving pertinent issues related to sustainability, brand safety, data privacy, as well as ensuring greater transparency across the value chain.

Senior representatives from Malaysia Airlines, Astro Radio, Rocketfuel Entertainment, GroupM, and Volvo Cars reached the consensus that as important as the crafted message is, marketers also need to carefully consider the consequence and impact on the receiver. 

‘Responsibility’ was brought up frequently when it came to marketing in a multidimensional world that involved virtual reality, non-fungible tokens, cryptocurrency and decentralized finance that places the power back into the hands of the end-users, the creators, and the consumers.

Vishal Jacob, chief digital officer at Wavemaker India, commented, “Publishers and platforms are now more focused than ever in creating unique hybrid online experiences for consumers that focus on activating first-party data. Delivering high-engagement value exchanges has never been more critical [when navigating in a] metaverse. Brands [need to] figure out what works and what doesn’t in the virtual world – it is an open invitation to experiment – for brands to be brave.”

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Huawei Ads, the mobile advertising solution arm of tech company Huawei, has announced partnerships with Malaysian Digital Association (MDA) as a member and with GroupM as its certified agency partner to drive the advertising sales in Malaysia. 

Said partnership aims to help the organizations to draw on each other’s strengths and allow HUAWEI Ads to contribute to the adtech industry growth in Malaysia.

The MDA membership will enable HUAWEI Ads to stay relevant to the current digital ad trends and play a part in shaping Malaysia’s digital policies and advertising standards. Meanwhile, as a ‘HUAWEI Ads Certified Agency’, GroupM and its agencies will have exclusive access to the inventory options available on HUAWEI Ads in Malaysia.

Rei Xiao, director of Malaysia Huawei Device Ecosystem, said, “GroupM is one of the most renowned brands in the digital advertising field with strong track records and market share. The partnership will allow us to expose our differentiated ad solutions to GroupM’s current and potential advertisers.”

New ad features such as in-app bidding and contextual ads will be introduced globally to meet growing advertiser needs. HUAWEI Ads is also actively in talks with other respected media firms to form more strategic alliances and expand its position locally.

“Built upon Huawei’s established ecosystem, HUAWEI Ads is leveraging the synergies between Huawei’s devices, native apps, open capabilities and over 33,000 third-party app media integrated into its network, to connect the data dots across various smart devices and apps, and helps advertisers reach out to more than 730 million global potential customers on its mobile ecosystem,” Xiao concluded.