GroupM relocates to new head office

By Melissa Perera

The WPP’s media investment management operation ‘GroupM’, serving as the parent company to agencies including Maxus, MEC, Mindshare, Mediacom and ESP Kinetic, recently relocated to 14/14A, Vajira road, Colombo 4.

The local GroupM team consists of GroupM Sri Lanka CEO Sabry Haniz, Mindshare Sri Lanka Leader Nigel Balakrishnan, Maxus Sri Lanka Business Director Alvin Gomesz and MEC Sri Lanka Business Director Namalie Herath.

“The company which operates in 81 countries through 400 outlets with 18,000 employees mainly focuses on strategic sport and entertainment consultancy, advising on sponsorships and associative marketing, integrating content solutions within brand communications and bringing new content models to market, specialising in sport, branded content, music, film, arts and CSR, developing, managing, activating and measuring local and international projects,” GroupM Managing Partner Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh Rohith Hettiaratchi stated.

“With ample space for our clients parking and an amazing office ambiance ‘GroupM’ is currently a world leader in market communication and number one as a media investment group,” he said

“GroupM’s client base includes the majority of the top 100 global advertisers – Unilever, Nokia, Kraft, Microsoft, Disney, Pepsi, Ford, Dell, Colgate, Canon, Samsung, Honda, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, McDonald’s, Nestle, Sony and Kellogg’s are a few,” Hettiaratchi revealed.

According to the global billing ranking in 2011-2012, the most extensive network in the Asia Pacific, GroupM ranks number one globally, with 29% agency shares of US$ 91 billion.

“The company follows five main values throughout its journey of success – being the pioneer, focusing on excellence, being the power of one, respecting individuality and of course, that life should be fun,” added Hettiaratchi.

The accolades of the company could make GroupM the highest award winning media specialist agency; the SLIM Media Gold in 2002, Chillies 2009 ‘Best of Show’ award, six awards at the Effies in 2011, APAC Purple Heads Awards 2011 second runner-up, five awards at the Effies in 2010 are a few of the group’s accomplishments.

GroupM set standards to be followed throughout their journey, starting with the ‘championed people’ meter measurement for TV viewership with LMRB in 2004, setting up third party monitoring norms in 2006 which was accepted a majority of media owners, developed radio planning guidelines in 2007, which were the first ever in Asia, transferred best practices from Sri Lanka to South Asia, and developed multimedia guidelines in 2007.

Listing the many important milestones GroupM passed, Hettiaratchi went on to say, “We started our journey in 1997 at the JWT Fulcrum launched to handle Unilever media, and in 2001 Mindshare Fulcrum was formed. In 2006, Mindshare operated as an independent unit of JWT and GroupM was formed 2011 with capital infusion from GroupM Singapore. In 2012, GropuM launched ESP to handle activation, events and OOH, and in 2013, MEC merged with GroupM.”   

Pix by Upul Abayasekara