With a goal of creating what chairman and CEO Maurice Lévy called a “leaner and simpler structure,” Publicis Media is consolidating its six global agency brands – Starcom, Mediavest, Spark, Zenith, Optimedia and the one-year-old Blue 449 – into four.
Under the new structure announced yesterday by the Paris-based holding company, the Starcom and Zenith networks will continue to operate as global agency brands, with Mediavest | Spark becoming a third network and Optimedia | Blue 449 forming what the company described as a “powerful global challenger brand.”
The new divisions form Publicis Groupe’s new Publicis Media division, which was created late last year in a sweeping reorganization that saw Publicis Groupe reorganized into four main hubs: Publicis Communications (responsible for all creative brands); Publicis Media; the digital division Publicis.Sapient and Publicis Health.
At the time, Publicis also moved former Starcom Mediavest Group global CEO Laura Desmond into a new holding company level role as chief revenue officer.
Publicis’ six-year-old ad technology arm VivaKi is being integrated into Publicis Media’s global practice model, while the Performics unit will remain as Publicis Media’s global performance marketing brand across all four networks.
The moves come during a turbulent time for Publicis Media, which lost the US$900 million Walmart account earlier this year – further compounding the 2015 losses of Procter & Gamble’s U.S. buying assignment and the Coca-Cola account.
“We are driven to get to the future first,” said Publicis Media CEO Steve King in a release announcing Wednesday’s reorganization. “Publicis Media is a fresh opportunity to simplify our organization, invent more modern approaches to gain efficiency, introduce structures for greater collaboration and effectiveness, and drive new levels of scale and client value.”
The company also announced Wednesday that it plans to eliminate the Starcom Mediavest Group and ZenithOptimedia Group names to facilitate what it called a “flatter” organizational structure.
The company also announced four global brand presidents for the individual networks, with Lisa Donohue taking over the role for Starcom; Vittorio Bonori for Zenith; Brian Terkelsen for Mediavest | Spark; and Andras Vigh for Optimedia | Blue 449.
The new structure covers top 20 markets, which are being organized into three regions led by a regional CEO. Tim Jones, currently CEO of ZenithOptimedia North America, will lead the Americas unit.
A spokesperson with Publicis Media in New York told Marketing that country-specific leadership for the restructured unit would be announced “within a few weeks.”
“This is a global announcement, so to try to drill down to how it affects [individual] offices would be purely speculative at this time,” said the spokesperson. “It’s going to be worked through in the coming weeks.”
Both Starcom Mediavest Group Canada and ZenithOptimedia Canada named new leaders last year, with Alexandra Panousis taking over as Starcom Mediavest Group CEO in April and Kristine Lyrette succeeding former ZenithOptimedia CEO Frank Friedman in August.
The company also announced that Publicis Media will house seven centralized global practices that will “standardize approaches, scale quickly and deliver connectivity, consistency, that span geography, agency brands and clients.” The seven practices are: Data technology and innovation; content; trading and buying; performance; business development and communications; business transformation; and analytics, research and insight.
Publicis Media has employs 13,500 people globally. The spokeperson said there are no layoffs planned as a result of the restructuring.
Publicis Media networks purchased approximately US$79 million worth of media space and time around the world last year according to The Wall Street Journal, citing data from the French research firm RECMA, ranking second behind WPP’s GroupM.
