Incremental change and “a minor tweak” don’t cut it in the media agency world anymore. This is the rationale behind the coming together of WPP’s Maxus and MEC in a new entity called Wavemaker, “a fantastic process that’s been conducted by bringing the teams together around the word,” says WPP Chief Digital Officer Rob Norman.
The bottom line is a global media, content and technology agency with 8,500 people in 139 offices spanning 90 countries and handling $38 billion in client billings. At the global helm will be Tim Castree, CEO of Maxus and Wavemaker.
“Tim is a firm believer, as we all are at GroupM, that the world we operate in and the business environment and the consumer environment has changed so much that incrementalism is no longer an effective path to business success,” Norman says in this interview with Beet.TV.
As Beet.TV reported last month, Starcom veteran Amanda Richman has been tapped to lead Wavemaker in the U.S. as CEO.
“They are determined to work with their clients to find bold and disruptive strategies that can actually generate growth and generate effectiveness,” Norman says of Castree and Richman. “They don’t want to start from the place of what did we do last year and think about how to change at the edges.”
Wavemaker’s client list includes Colgate-Palmolive, L’Oreal and Paramount, as The Drum reports.
“I think it’s a fresh start for all of the people and injection of energy,” Norman says of the merger.
WPP is hoping that Castree, Richman and their teams will “move things at step change pace as opposed to looking at what was done last year and hoping that somehow a minor tweak is going to save the day.”
