GroupM North America’s restructuring plan is already having an impact in Canada.
Although GroupM Canada has declined to comment on the layoffs, the agency has already shed some of its the senior executives, including this week’s departure of Lindsey Talbot, GroupM chief investment officer for the past four years. Talbot had been with GroupM agencies since 2016, first as managing director of trading and activation for Maxus Global and then as Wavemaker’s VP of investment.
Last month, two senior executives left the agency. These departures include Quebec-based industry veteran Monique Brosseau, president of GroupM Quebec for more than six years. Brosseau was previously SVP business director and had been with GroupM since 2017. Before that, she held senior positions with DDB Canada, ZenithOptimedia Canada and retailer Reitman’s Canada.
GroupM’s chief commerce officer, Nikki Stone, also left the agency last month. Stone was in that post for just under a year after a run as chief executive officer of Wavemaker Canada, another GroupM agency. She was executive vice-president at Zenith, a Publicis agency. Before that, Stone was executive vice-president at Publicis Media.
A few days before announcing the restructuring, GroupM global CEO Brian Lesser set off a flurry of rumours and speculation in the industry when he sent an internal memo to staff outlining plans to reduce headcount as part of a WPP restructuring effort.
Following that, GroupM North America CEO Sharb Farjami revealed that between 40% and 45% of the workforce in the U.S. will be relocated to new divisions during a town hall meeting on Friday. The affected staff will be part of a new internal unit called Media Management and Delivery (MMD), which consolidates investment, Nexus and campaign reporting functions.
The goal of the restructuring is to simplify the company’s operating model, which would see WPP’s individual agencies – GroupM, Wavemaker, Mediacom and Mindshare – housing dedicated client teams, but they would no longer operate as distinct business units with separate P&Ls.
