The latest leadership shakeup at WPP’s media agency division Group M is at the highest level of the organisation, with Brian Lesser returning to the company as global CEO in September. Lesser takes up the role four years after Group M acquired digital agency Essence in 2015, and succeeds Christian Juhl, who has led Group M for the past five years.
A quick poll of former WPP and GroupM executives, including some who worked with Lesser during his time as CEO of GroupM North America from 2015 to 2017, found him to be the leading candidate to boost GroupM’s technology profile and capabilities, including Choreograph, the media agency network’s data and technology team, which operates as part of WPP’s open platform.
“The irony is that Brian is a great hire from the Sorrell era,” said one former WPP executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a time when the Sorrell era (Sir Martin Sorrell was WPP’s longtime CEO and chairman) was marked by a slew of acquisitions in the ad agency and ad tech sectors that contributed greatly to WPP’s dominance of the holding company world in the first two decades of the 2000s, the executive said.
“His inside knowledge and outside experience make him extremely well positioned to turn the business around,” said Brian Wieser, a media analyst who previously led business intelligence at Group M.
But the job Lesser will take over from Juhl won’t be easy. GroupM has lost more customers than it gained, according to Jay Pattisall, vice president and principal agency analyst at Forrester. He cited global losses including Pfizer, Shell, PayPal, Nestle and Uber, and North American losses for Uber, Walgreens, L’Oreal and General Mills. Both Lesser and Juhl declined requests for interviews.
“Group M’s business development efforts have been severely challenged as it experienced client losses during a period of turmoil in 2023 and the first half of 2024. This can in part be attributed to spending cuts by technology companies, with all agencies experiencing periods of contraction,” Pattisall said. “However, Group M’s loss of new business is made even more challenging in that the company has not been successful in replacing revenue with new acquisitions.”
Comparing GroupM’s revenue trends to Publicis’, Wieser wrote in the latest Madison & Wall Newsletter, “In terms of net revenue, GroupM made about $5.7 billion last year, while Publicis Media made $4.9 billion. If current trends continue, the gap between the two may be just 10% by the end of the year. By our estimates, as recently as 2015, GroupM was twice the size of Publicis Media.”
Pattisall cited several areas Lesser must master, or have the right people in place to guide him: “Lesser’s challenge will be to deliver and service a great foundation in media management while simultaneously expanding and completing the technology vision,” Pattisall said. “GroupM and most of the large holding company media companies and their employees are dealing with the impact of COVID-19, mass departures, quiet departures, and now automation. Fundamental to this is ensuring that today’s talent is properly trained and upskilled to work alongside tomorrow’s technology. The legacy of this generation of advertising executives is to reinvent the model for the next generation. At GroupM, that now falls to Lesser.”
Lesson in History
Given that Lesser is something of an advertising heir apparent, and that his move to Madison Avenue was first reported before his career had even officially begun, it’s no exaggeration to describe his return to Group M as a “homecoming.”
Lesser first joined WPP in 2007 when the company acquired 24/7 Media, a division that eventually morphed into Xaxis after the $650 million acquisition, and Lesser became CEO of WPP’s programmatic business in 2011.
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Lessor in many ways embodies the rise of ad tech, a time when it evolved from a fringe investment to a long-term strategic bet for many in the media industry. Indeed, Lessor was a vocal supporter of Xaxis’s undisclosed margin model at the time (which some would argue was ambiguous), arguing that such a tactic was necessary given the investment requirements at the time.
At the time, Lesser was instrumental in developing AppNexus, an independent ad tech darling that received an investment from WPP and joined its board. After becoming North American CEO of GroupM, Lesser joined AT&T in 2017. He played a key role in the company’s acquisition of AppNexus in 2018 for $1.6 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The division later re-emerged as Xandr, with Lesser as its first CEO, pitching it as an alternative to big tech companies like Facebook and Google.
But his tenure came to an abrupt end in early 2020 as it became clear that Zander’s advertising ambitions were incompatible with the privacy concerns of the telecommunications company’s new management, amid other political issues including opposition to the merger with Timer Warner.
Today’s challenges and opportunities
And now he’s back to take on the world’s largest media agency network, where growth has slowed considerably, though a Group M representative noted steady growth: “We have grown steadily every year for the past five years, growing approximately 25% cumulatively since 2019.” The representative also said that COMvergence will release its 2023 billings later today, “which will show that Group M continues to hold significant dominance in the global media market.”
Still, it’s the technology and data science side of its media agency business that GroupM must continue to hone, Pattisall said. “The media agency technology strategy is fundamental to its success.” [The] The move to bring back Lesser is a powerful move to strengthen GroupM Nexus and deliver the necessary interoperability with WPP Open.”
Pattisall pointed to the recent hiring of Flywheel Digital’s Sandy Welch to lead platform commerce efforts and partnerships as evidence that “WPP is serious about its technology strategy within Group M.”
Juhl, meanwhile, wrapped up a five-year plan to transform GroupM, handing the baton to Lesser to improve the company’s tech stack. Pattisall credited Juhl for “laying the groundwork by creating GroupM Nexus, based on Xaxis and Choreograph, and restructuring GroupM’s media agency.”
Juhl, who kept a low profile both inside and outside GroupM during his time there, was “very isolated,” said one former GroupM executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Juhl has now been moved to corporate development, not too different from other executives at acquired agencies and ad tech companies, but many observers who spoke to Digiday expect the position to eventually pave the way for an amicable exit from WPP.
