Maxus and MEC to merge as GroupM reduces media agency portfolio to three
WPP is to shake up its media agency portfolio, reducing its number of major media agency brands from four to three by merging Maxus and MEC.
The move was announced in New York overnight, with local management in Australia this morning referring press calls overseas.
However, given that the two agencies are strong in different states, the merger would be unlikely to cause a large number of job losses locally. The merged agency would be likely to have just over 200 staff in Australia.
MEC is currently led by the Sydney-based James Hier, while Maxus is led by Mark McCraith, who splits his time between Sydney and Melbourne.
What an absolutely bizarre decision. They spent ten years building up Maxus from the ground, and become the envy of all other agency groups who have since tried to copy them, only to pull it down. If its an efficiency play then get rid of the layers of GroupM management, not a revenue friving agency!
@Huh – the problem is its the layers of groupm management making these decisions to merge agencies to create efficiencies!
Good luck to all the good people working at MEC and Maxus.. Big companies dont have a great track record in large scale change, but hopefully they get this right!
There should be no surprise to anyone that understands anything with those companies which happens outside of their roles. From a strategic point of view this makes complete sense, it will ultimately support a level of added efficiency and reduce the duplication of efforts under the GroupM brand.