Mediacom’s Alexander Schmidt-Vogel Named Global CEO of GroupM Trading

Alexander Schmidt-Vogel, the founding manager and current CEO of GroupM’s MediaCom Worldwide, was today named Global CEO of GroupM Trading, a new position.

The announcement was made by GroupM Global CEO Irwin Gotlieb, who said Schmidt-Vogel will move into his new role in the coming weeks, pending confirmation of his successor at MediaCom.

In his new role Schmidt-Vogel will be responsible for all GroupM trading activities and decisions, with an emphasis on developing best practices in trading operations across all regions worldwide. He will report to Gotlieb and GroupM Chief Operating Officer Rupert Day. GroupM is parent company to WPP media agencies including MAXUS, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia and MindShare.

Gotlieb said that over the past three years, GroupM has been developing strong local trading operations that demonstrate the intelligent application of scale through the construction of new trading models that maximize client benefit.

“Alexander pioneered tactical and implementation planning practices and was the first to exploit the capability to improve client pricing in the marketplace,” said Gotlieb. “We are delighted that he has agreed to lead GroupM’s trading operations around the world.”

Schmidt-Vogel was a founding manager of MediaCom and over the past 22 years played a key role in the company’s growth. Since its founding, MediaCom has become a leading global media service agency with billings of almost $18 billion and with offices in 86 countries.

In 2002, Schmidt-Vogel was named MediaCom’s Worldwide CEO with offices in New York and Europe after serving as Chairman and CEO of MediaCom Europe since 1996. Prior to that he served as CEO of MediaCom Germany since 1988. He started his career as a media trainee at Gramm & Grey in Düsseldorf in 1976 before being named the agency’s head of planning in 1980 and media director in 1986.

“After 32 years with the company, and after 22 years building the MediaCom network around the globe, I feel a tremendous passion for this new challenge,” said Schmidt-Vogel. “Value creation for our clients through sophisticated and new trading models will be the backbone of all future offline and online communication. I’m excited at the prospect of further strengthening the best and largest trading organization in the world.”

Schmidt-Vogel will continue to be based in Berlin, Germany.

ABOUT GROUPM
GroupM is the leading global media investment management operation. It serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including MAXUS, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia and MindShare. Our primary purpose is to maximize the performance of WPP’s media communications agencies on behalf of our clients, our shareholders and our people by operating as a parent and collaborator in performance-enhancing activities such as trading, content creation, sports, digital, finance, proprietary tool development and other business-critical capabilities. The agencies that comprise GroupM are all global operations in their own right with leading market positions. The focus of GroupM is the intelligent application of physical and intellectual scale to benefit trading, innovation, and new communication services, to bring competitive advantage to our clients and our companies.

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