Tiger moves media account to Essence as agency opens in Melbourne
Group M’s Essence is opening its second Australian office, following its launch in Sydney in 2016.
Tiger Airways will be the agency’s foundation client, which was previously held by MEC.
A potential conflict arose when MEC merged with Maxus, which held the Jetstar media account.
The MEC and Maxus merger resulted in Wavemaker which officially launched late last year.
Essence’s Melbourne operation, along with Sydney, will be run by Jovy Gill, managing director of Essence Australia. Jenny Pham has also joined from Wavemaker and will take on the role of vice president and managing partner. She will oversee the Melbourne operation with a launch team of five.
Gill: MD of Essence in Australia
The agency now has an APAC office count of 10, thanks to additional new offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Jakarta, and also flagged it is “rapidly expanding into a full-service agency”. It was acquired by WPP in 2015.
Mark Patterson, CEO, Group M Asia-Pacific and chairman, Group M China said: “Essence is a key element in our continued transformation, leadership and growth as a
group in the region.
“This next phase of expansion is great news for Essence and its clients, and GroupM will continue to invest in and support Essence in further enhancing its unique product and service offerings across Asia-Pacific.”
Pham: Joining from Wavemaker
Kyoko Matsushita, CEO of Essence APAC said the region was a huge priority for the agency.
“As our clients continue to scale their businesses across channels and continents, we need to do the same. I’m grateful that GroupM has helped us transform into the global, full-service agency partner our clients need right now, and for the robust leadership team we have in place to shepherd this next wave of growth in the region.”
This is genius. Merge two agencies to save costs, then have to sink even greater costs to open a new agency to serve conflicted clients.
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Wonder if the staff moving across to the new agency, potentially in different roles, got a say in it… WPP does write in their contracts that they can shift around their companies or make you redundant if you decline the offer.
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