The year 2018 was one of considerable change for WPP, from the top of its management to its various operating companies and GroupM offerings. But it\u2019s possible to map the road forward largely with one word: simplify.<\/p>\n
As in, make things as simple as possible for the biggest of clients and the teams within GroupM while putting forth a value proposition to attract mid-level or insurgent brands, according to GroupM North America CEO Tim Castree. \u201cWe are looking to radically simplify our business,\u201d he says in this interview with Beet.TV.<\/p>\n
Two areas of particular focus for Castree are increasing the company\u2019s specialist capabilities while strengthening the core fundamentals of successful cross channel planning and activation. \u201cObviously, the business has been changing a lot for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Formerly the Global CEO of GroupM\u2019s Wavemaker agency, Castree assumed his new position in December of 2018, as Campaign reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n Business at GroupM has been growing in areas like content, ecommerce, precision and performance marketing, analytics and data sciences. \u201cThese are the things that are becoming increasingly part of the integrated media offering, so that\u2019s what we\u2019re in business to deliver,\u201d Castree explains.<\/p>\n Asked about the growth and influence of GroupM\u2019s [m]PLATFORM<\/a>, he describes it as \u201ca kind of liberation if you will\u201d of technology assets that had existed inside of Xaxis<\/a>. MPlatform is now a key element of WPP\u2019s overall tech strategy.<\/p>\n While advanced capabilities are important, clients are looking for \u201cfoundational\u201d work on holistic cross-channel and cross-platform activation, some that\u2019s been hindered by walled gardens, different ad environments and the fragmentation of ad formats. \u201cBut it\u2019s still really in many ways what clients are looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n Recruiting the appropriate mix of talent is constrained by the combined pressures of client procurement and market competition.<\/p>\n \u201cSo a lot of the strategic things that we\u2019re trying to get done are happening in an environment where the core business has been getting squeezed, and it\u2019s been difficult to make a lot of the investment choices that we need to make to grow our business into the future,\u201d Castree<\/a> says.<\/p>\n Noting that media agencies generally attract \u201cgraduates in fairly monolithic ways,\u201d GroupM is seeking to refine its recruitment efforts by working with technical schools and training specialists \u201cto bring more qualified people into the organization and then do that across a number of various work streams.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The year 2018 was one of considerable change for WPP, from the top of its management to its various operating companies and GroupM offerings. But it\u2019s possible to map the road forward largely with one word: simplify. As in, make things as simple as possible for the biggest of clients and the teams within GroupM […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":58078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[]},"categories":[1],"tags":[5286,5287,5314,4865,6671],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.beet.tv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}