MEC and Maxus to be merged and named WAVEMAKER

Martin Sorrell

WPP said MEC and Maxus will be merging to form WAVEMAKER. Both companies are two of its largest media companies.

The company said making waves happens when media, content and technology come together – activating against unrivalled purchase journey understanding for the clients we represent. The brand mark WAVEMAKER reflects the agency’s heritage, born from WPP and GroupM.

MEC is the fifth largest media agency network in the world, with domestic and international clients such as Vodafone, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, Marriott, Chanel, GE, Xerox, Colgate-Palmolive, Chevron, Beiersdorf, Tiffany and Michelin. MEC has global billings of over $26.8 billion (2014). The global network is led from regional headquarters in London, New York, Singapore, Dubai and Miami employing more than 5,000 people worldwide. MEC is a founding partner in GroupM, the WPP Group media investment management operation. Its core business is media buying and media planning but as the media landscape has become more complex it has diversified its capabilities which now encompass all forms of digital media (social, mobile, search, programmatic), analytics, insight, content and sponsorship.

Maxus is a global media agency, with services including communications strategy, media planning and buying, digital marketing, search engine marketing (SEM) through search advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO), direct response media, data analytics, and marketing ROI evaluation. In December 2011, Maxus became Campaign magazine’s Global Media Network of the Year. Maxus is part of WPP plc, which employs 150,000 people across the advertising, public relations and market research sectors, and part of GroupM, the media investment management group that serves as the parent company for all of WPP plc’s media agencies: Maxus, Mindshare, MEC, MediaCom and Xaxis.

Wavemaker is an exciting new global agency brand with a powerful proposition for clients. Tim and his team have the full support of GroupM’s scale, resources and expertise.”

The brand, along with a new visual identity, will go live locally as the merger completes in each country, to be finalised by January 2018. Wavemaker will have offices in 90 countries and over 8,500 employees. Major global clients include L’Oréal, Vodafone, Marriott, Colgate-Palmolive and Paramount.

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