The holding companies have long treated one another's executive suites as a kind of informal lending library, and the latest volume to change shelves is Laura Ryan, who is joining WPP Media as chief media officer from IPG's Orion Worldwide.
In her new role, Ms. Ryan will oversee global investment, partnerships, media management and activation teams for WPP Media, the unit that Brian Lesser has been building since his return to WPP last year. The assignment, as Mr. Lesser described it in a post on LinkedIn, involves "bringing media, clients and technology closer together" — a formulation that has appeared in approximately nine hundred holding company announcements since 2019, though one assumes Ms. Ryan will find her own way of putting it into practice.
Ms. Ryan's career in media spans nearly three decades. She began at Universal McCann in 1995, back when it was still called Universal McCann, and subsequently held positions at Ziff Davis, Rodale, Mountain Sports Media and Bonnier Corporation before landing at IPG. (For those keeping score at home, that résumé represents a journey from agency to publisher and back again — a path that has become increasingly common as the lines between those roles have blurred.)
Mr. Lesser, who previously ran Xaxis and GroupM North America before a detour through AT&T's advertising ambitions, said the speed of change in the industry was "opening up incredible opportunities." He added that he "couldn't be more excited about what's ahead."
The appointment is the latest in a series of senior hires as WPP Media continues to take shape under Mr. Lesser's direction. Whether the future of media will be built there, or somewhere else, or in several places at once, remains to be determined — but for now, WPP Media has secured someone who has been watching the industry almost as long as the industry has been worth watching.
Original story published in campaignlive.com: "WPP Media hires Laura Ryan as chief media officer | Campaign US"