GroupM Canada has added to its senior executive team with the appointment of UK native Stuart Garvie to the newly created position of chief commercial officer. His appointment is effective May 1.
Garvie will work with the Canadian CEOs of GroupM’s four media networks – Maxus, MEC, MediaCom and Mindshare – to create what the company called “shared specialist services” in areas such as sports sponsorship, entertainment marketing data and analytics and mobile. He will also help shape GroupM’s consolidated trading division, GroupM Trading, with input from the company’s four Canadian trading leads.
Garvie was selected for the role based on his extensive experience on both the client and agency side of the business, said GroupM North America CEO Kelly Clark. “He has worked with big, complex clients [to] manage their media buying and negotiations across many markets, including Canada, and he has deep in-market credentials,” said Clark.
Garvie is a media industry veteran who joins GroupM Canada from Maxus, where he has been deputy global trading director, responsible for optimizing the media company’s trading practices for clients, since 2011.
He spent the early part of his career as media manager, Northern Europe for Reckitt Benckiser – managing media agency relationships across three countries, four business units and 18 brands – and also worked as head of TV buying for Manning Gottlieb OMD. He also held London-based buying positions with agencies including IDK and Optimedia. Prior to joining Maxus, he was media purchasing manager for Danone in the U.K. and Ireland.
GroupM will appoint what Clark called a “support team” after Garvie relocates to Toronto from London, although the company plans to adopt a streamlined approach to building the team.
“Everywhere in the world that this is successful, we don’t build a gigantic overhead structure in the centre,” said Clark. “We have central leadership and coordination, and they work as partners for the four agency trading leads and collectively decide what’s right for their clients.”
GroupM has taken what Clark characterized as a “less formal” approach to trading in Canada, with collaboration between the four trading leads and agency CEOs. “I think it was on that basis that they said ‘We’ve seen some encouraging early signs, and a more formal structure could create some greater returns for us in terms of how we drive value for clients,’” said Clark.
