GroupM CEO Brian Lesser Lays Out His Plan for the Agency Giant’s Future

GroupM chief executive officer Brian Lesser is in a “massive hurry” to advance the agency’s business.

He returned to lead the global media buying giant in September, where he’d previously served as its North America CEO from 2015-2017. In his first public interview since joining last year, Lesser discussed his new role and priorities for GroupM with ADWEEK executive editor Alison Weissbrot at ADWEEK House during CES.

After his first tenure at GroupM, Lesser pivoted to lead an ambitious new ad business at AT&T, then became CEO at the data firm InfoSum. 

Given his recent adtech background, Lesser is looking to invest in technology. He also wants to invest in staff while simplifying the agency’s processes and facilitating more collaboration between agencies.

“The vision for GroupM and the broader WPP is we want to help our advertisers navigate change,” he said. “The only constant in the media business is change, and we are going to experience more change in the next five years than we have in the last 25 years.”

What Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG means for GroupM

With Omnicom’s impending acquisition of IPG, Lesser said it presents an advantage for GroupM, however its scale implications “remain to be seen.”

“When I look at the reasons for doing that deal, I hear a lot about data, but the data solution is a 20-year-old database that is CRM and traditional ID-driven,” he said. “I [also] hear a lot about scale but not scale that matters to those clients,” he said.

Lesser said he isn’t too concerned with being dethroned as the top media buyer either, saying that it may alleviate pressure and allow the agency to do more.

“We’ll see if we’re number two, and how long we’re number two,” Lesser added.

Investing in its platform and people

One of Lesser’s main priorities is to invest in GroupM’s tech platform.

“There’s some basic things we need to do at GroupM to be very competitive,” he said.

WPP has invested more than $300 million per year into its WPP Open platform for the past three years, Lesser shared. He said those investments will continue as GroupM looks to simplify the organization to better manage its clients. 

“The vision is to continue investing in those components including data, technology, and AI such that we can drive our clients’ business forward,” he said.

Simplifying its organization through streamlining

Over the past 20 years, GroupM has created, merged, and acquired companies like Mindshare, Wavemaker, and EssenceMediacom to keep up with the ad industry’s evolution.

Lesser said that GroupM must go from “a collection of companies to one company” by streamlining its planning, activation, and measurement methodologies with data and technology at its core.

Rather than consolidating, GroupM builds agencies to meet the demand of its clients, he said.

The agency will need to reorganize and acquire assets to streamline its strategies but not simply for scale.

“Scale for the sake of scale is not really important to our clients anymore,” said Lesser. “It [has to] be scale for the sake of learning more, knowing more, and engaging consumers better.

How scale is evolving

For years, advertisers favored ad agencies with that massive scale. But Lesser said that scale isn’t important in the way that it was 20 years ago. Back then, agencies aggregated scale as leverage to obtain better pricing from media members.

While that still matters, scale is more important now for the data and markets that can be accessed as well as the people within the organization, he said.

“Scale still matters, it’s just been redefined,” said Lesser. “It’s much more about our collective wisdom and intelligence.”

The future of media buying with AI

When it comes to AI, Lesser believes that in the next five years, “there is no human that touches a media plan.”

“AI is not going to take anyone’s job—the person that understands AI is going to take people’s jobs,” he said.

The exec said that companies must lean into emerging technology and understand how it will affect the industry. GroupM plans to spend $30 million educating and training its employees to work with AI, saying that 70% of the people it hires already have experience with the technology.